S2E2: The secret AI strategy this small NYC business uses to save thousands
Two co-owners of a charcuterie shop off Central Park on the AI that replaced a hire, the agency quote they refused, and the proposal that still takes three days.
Artificial Reality
Stories
Interviews
The full conversations. One operator, one industry, three questions: what worked, what didn't, and what they wish existed.
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S2E1: AI should have killed his career. He's making $1M a year instead
Swipe File owner and 20-year copywriter Neville Medhora on how AI killed his main business, made a dormant side project his primary revenue, and why he runs it all on a $20 ChatGPT subscription.
S1E8: Why 99% of AI products fail — the gap between builders and buyers is bigger than you think
Six operators, seven industries, three questions each. Galina Fendikevich puts season one side by side: every real AI win was invisible, every real failure was public, and six executives described the same missing product.
What's working
AI that operators kept using after the trial ended, with the tool named and the result stated.
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The construction AI problem Annija Eizenarma would solve first
Cross-company coordination, not internal workflow. What a subcontractor communication hub must do, and the six questions to ask before signing.
How a $1,000 designer finished what AI and Canva started
Dr. Nikki Siso designed her label in Canva, found AI output templated, and paid a $10,000-a-client designer $1,000 to make it print ready.
How Dr. Nikki Siso tests her own AI without a developer
She tells Claude to pretend to be five very difficult clients and walk the whole flow. The bugs turn up. Here is the method, step by step.
How Claude Code replaced a $20,000-a-year platform
Sam Polstein builds competitor dashboards and answer engine analytics with no coding experience, replacing reporting that once cost $20,000 a year.
How Dr. Nikki Siso automated the part of her job she hated
A Claude, Blotato and Google Docs pipeline schedules her Instagram weekly with one approval click. The tone work still takes hours, and she says so.
Four jobs construction firms are actually giving AI
Vendor pricing once meant calling 5 to 10 suppliers. Annija Eizenarma names the construction workflows where AI is working now, and one that isn't yet.
What's not working
Where the tool was bought, deployed, and quietly abandoned — and what it cost to find out.
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Why subcontractor communication hubs fail on the side that did not buy them
The GC buys it and the subcontractor is asked to change for free. Why construction coordination products stall, and the inversion nobody has built.
Voice cloning is five to eight seconds too slow for a live client session
A health practitioner put her cloned voice on the shelf over a five-to-eight-second delay. What to test before you buy a voice tool.
The $30,000 sequencing error AI did not warn her about
A permit filed before the mechanical plan cost Conscious Kitchen $30,000. What general-purpose AI missed, and five checks to run before you build.
The eight stages of a luxury trip, and the two nobody built for
Booking is the fourth of eight stages a luxury travel advisor works through. Software clusters there and thins out at inquiry and loyalty.
Why is AI social media automation still so manual?
Because the steps do not chain. What an M&A broker still does by hand, what Blaze AI, Predis.ai, FeedHive and Ocoya cover, and six tests before you buy.
Five hundred loops: what building your own AI tool actually took
Jennifer Kerum tried to build her own client intake platform with no technical background. Her verdict, and the six checks to run before you start.
Best apps for eating out with dietary restrictions in 2026
EveryBite, Fig, Spokin and Foodini compared on what each actually checks, plus the questions to ask before handing over a health profile.
Five wearables that aim at nervous system regulation, and what to verify
Apollo Neuro, Lief Therapeutics, Pulsetto, Oxa and Moonbird, what each one actually does, and how to choose between detection and intervention.
Tern, Safari Portal, Maya and planis.ai, scored against one workflow
Four AI platforms for travel advisors, scored against the eight-stage workflow a luxury operator described. None of them covers all of it.
Can a client tour a destination in VR before booking?
Yes, but only as a recording. Threshold 360, CloudPano and EXP360 compared for luxury travel previews, and what none of them can do yet.
Best AI tools for construction floor plans and engineering drawings
Five funded products generate floor plans and electrical systems from a prompt. What each one covers, and how to evaluate them before you buy.
Best AI tools for searching your own vetted knowledge
Slite, Guru, Onyx and Vectara search a company's private notes. A yacht broker lost 90 minutes to a search none of them was built for.
What needs to be built
Operators describing the product they would pay for, in their own words.
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The wearable industry has the sensors and none of the psychology
HRV detection is solved. Knowing what to say to this particular person is not. The personalization layer a health practitioner wants built.
The diners who stopped eating out are the wedge for menu AI
Diners who quit restaurants are the most underserved group in food service. Why menu compatibility AI stalls, and which restaurants unlock it.
The number no AI drawing tool will publish
Construction AI markets generation speed. Nobody reports how much output survives engineer review unchanged, and that is the figure buyers need.
AI agent testing tools all assume you have a developer
Coval, Hamming AI, Cekura, Maxim AI and LangWatch are built for engineers. The operator who needed testing most improvised it with a prompt.
Retrieval is solved. Capture is the product nobody built
Every AI knowledge product assumes the knowledge is already written down. In expert businesses it exists as an impression, and then it is gone.
What client-aware news intelligence is, and why nobody has built it
Monitoring platforms know the news, not your clients. The comms product request Sam Polstein described, the nine requirements, and the gap for builders.
Product requests
Standalone asks pulled from the interviews, for the teams who build this software.
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No-code AI builders still fail the website test
A charter broker benchmarks AI builders against website builders. One intake flow needs three vendors, which is the whole answer.
Nobody sells the layer between a set of AI skills and a working product
Dr. Nikki Siso built a fifteen-skill AI assessment in Claude, then had to hire a developer. The gap is deployment, not intelligence.
What Dr. Nikki Siso wants AI companies to build for restaurants
Dr. Nikki Siso named four AI products she wants built for restaurants: menu compatibility, permitting, print-ready labels and recipe costing.
The button nobody built: make this print ready
An operator's product request in one line. AI answered the label question she asked and never told her the file needed bleed to reach a printer.
How Sofiane Ghorbel would use VR to start the relationship earlier
A luxury hospitality CEO wants clients to meet their concierge in a headset before booking. Every VR travel product ships the room without the person.
Inside the deal room an M&A broker duct-taped together
Christine McDannell takes five deals at a time and reports a seven-month close on infrastructure she assembled herself. What she wants built instead.
The Operator Brief
You run the business
The tools operators kept, the ones they dropped, and what it cost to find out.
The Builder Brief
You build the AI
Product gaps in operators' own words, straight from the interviews.
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