The modem screamed, then nothing

My first job was explaining the internet to people who had never seen it.

1996. Buenos Aires. Sinectis, one of the first internet providers in Argentina. Fifteen of us. People called because the modem screamed and then nothing happened.

Three years later I was helping build AltoCity, one of the country's first online marketplaces, backed by the biggest shopping-mall owner in Argentina. We were selling online to people who didn't trust online.

No budget for tools. Then 2001 happened, and there was no budget for anything.

So we got good at questions instead. What's actually stopping you? Where does the paper pile up? Who's typing the same thing twice?

Twenty-five years later I run an AI consultancy from Scotland, with clients in the US, in ecommerce, in industries I'd never heard of.

The tools are unrecognisable. The questions haven't changed.

That's the part nobody wants to hear when they call about AI. The model isn't the hard part. The hard part is the same as it was with the modem: finding the thing that's actually broken.

Argentina taught me that when you can't afford to be wrong, you learn to look before you build.

It's still the most valuable thing Visionator offers.

Not the AI.

The looking.