Episode Talking Points

Picking the wrong AI path can cost you quarters and millions. Get a dead-simple framework to decide: build in-house, buy a platform, partner with specialists, or acquire a team, plus real costs, risks, and playbooks.

You'll get:

• 7-question scorecard to choose your path in minutes
• Year-1 and 3-year cost realities (TCO, payback, "caretaking" budget)
• How to avoid lock-in: abstraction, export rights, multi-model failover
• Clear playbooks for Build, Buy, Partner (BOT), and Acquire
• Ecom case clinics and 90-day rollout plan with POC gates

Concepts: Build for moats, Buy for speed, Partner for acceleration, Acquire when time is the bottleneck. Price the downside, keep your off-ramp real, scale only what's boringly reliable.

Chapters

• The decision that makes or breaks your next 12 months
• Why this matters now: AI spend surging; most struggle to monetize. Investors diligence AI readiness. Commoditization accelerating.
• The four paths: Build (AI is your moat, 6–12 months), Buy (supports product, weeks to value), Partner (speed + customization), Acquire (instant team + IP, highest risk)
• 7-question scorecard to know which path to take for your brand.
• Money talk: Build (multi-million 3-year TCO, 10–20% ongoing ops), Buy (2–8 weeks, watch usage creep), Partner (6–8 week pilots, BOT by month 3–6), Acquire (cash-heavy, integration critical). CFO lens: payback, run-rate, +30% contingency.
• Flexibility & risk: Open-weights vs closed APIs.
• Abstraction layers, contract must-haves (data ownership, export rights, SLAs), multi-model failover, 30/60/90 POC gates

Playbooks:

• Build (scope one workflow, staging, retries, evals, observability),
• Buy (2-week POV, negotiate exit, phased rollout),
• Partner (SOW with knowledge transfer),
• Acquire (diligence, retention, integration plan)

Case studies:

• D2C skincare (Buy + Partner + Build guardrails = 30–40% deflection, −15–25% AHT).
• Marketplace (Build ranking, Buy tooling, Partner MLOps)

90-day plan:

• 0–30 (pick use case, scorecard, define gates),
• 31–60 (pilot with guardrails),
• 61–90 (scale to 20–30% or switch)
• Red flags to pay attention to

Who this is for:

• Non-technical founders,
• D2C/ecommerce teams,
• anyone weighing speed vs control vs cost

Connect with Leo:

• X: ⁠Leo Sadeq⁠
• LinkedIn: ⁠Leo Sadeq⁠
• 2X-5X your ROI in 90 days with AI. ⁠Ascend AI⁠