Yes, but... why?

Francisco Hernández

Francisco Hernández

— 4 min read

Hi there,

I'm Francisco, Founder & CEO at Menhir AI. If you're reading this, it's because either we know each other or we've crossed paths during our five years as a company, or at previous jobs (linkedin).

How it started... how it's going (after 5 years)

Why "yes, but why?"

I come from an Aerospace Engineering background, not computer science. So I learned how to code in Fortran. AI is cool, but I don't feel comfortable deploying systems I don't understand. And so do our customers.

That's why xAI (explainable AI) is so big at Menhir AI. Because I need to know the "why".

"This customer will most likely churn/cross-sell/default/..." - "yes, but why?"

But why start our newsletter & blog now?

As many of you know, at Menhir we've been building AI systems long before the hype. We've been working in the trenches, and now we're stepping forward to help our friends, followers, and colleagues generate real value with AI. No fluff, no buzzwords—just genuine impact. That's what we're all about!

I'll be writing to you directly—no copilot, no AI assistance, just me. I'll share the times we succeeded, what worked and what didn't, and yes, even the times we messed up. We're building in public, and we want you to be part of the journey.

Why on this platform and not a simple email?

Because here, you can comment, and we can all learn together. That's the main goal: building an audience to learn about how to get value from this technology, beyond the hype.

I will structure it as follows:

  1. Learnings from growing Menhir: Building in Public
    You can expect stories of how we transformed from a consulting company run by 24-year-olds into a company with AI deployments in over six countries, managing €12bn+ with our algorithms. We embrace new challenges every day.
  2. New Tools and Case Studies We've Found
    As tech people, we are at the forefront of what is being launched in our field. So we aim to curate what's interesting and valuable. We'll try to avoid the fancy stuff, to focus on what really matters.
  3. What We're Working On
    We'll keep you updated on the innovative solutions we're crafting, exploring the latest AI rollouts. We like to explore what comes out from second point to go beyond the hype.

Since Generative AI is the big thing everyone is trying to figure out, our first post will explain how we're using it internally—really showing how we take our own medicine. More on our next post.

So what's new in the AI space?

OpenAI Introduces Canvas: Revolutionizing AI-Assisted Work

  • What is Canvas? An innovative workspace where you collaborate with AI directly in your documents or code, receiving inline feedback and suggestions. Like the Artifacts from Claude, but inside ChatGPT.
  • Impact on Our Work: The main goal is for making iterations faster and enhancing the quality of our output. But nothing new for Claude users.

AI may take your job, but it will also help you find a new one

This GitHub repo has gone viral: it helps implement an AI bot capable of applying to 1000 jobs in 24h getting 50 interviews. This is something we've already seen around, but now anyone can implement it.

Other Noteworthy AI Developments

  • Meta's New AI Models: generate high-quality videos and audio from text prompts, pushing the boundaries of creative content generation.
  • AI-Generated Podcasts: AI is developing so fast that now this seems old. Google launched NotebookLM and it allows for instant Podcast creation. I tested it with our Fantasy Football WhatsApp chat, and it really did deliver!
👀
For the sake of my friends' privacy, will not share the podcast.

Leveraging New Tools

While AI engineering tools are expanding, there's still plenty to accomplish. We're focused on using AI to 10x our team's productivity and impact. Emerging tools like Pythagora AI aim to automate coding tasks, but for now, we're utilizing Vercel's v0 to quickly test UIs and prototypes, keeping our MVP development agile.

In Summary

Staying abreast of these developments allows us to leverage AI more effectively, delivering real value and maintaining a competitive edge in a rapidly evolving field.

So stay tuned! I'm excited to connect with all of you and hear your feedback.

As a gift, here's a cheat sheet on the do's and don'ts for a successful AI transformation.

Best regards,

Francisco

CEO @ Menhir AI

If the link to the cheat sheet doesn't work, use this one: https://www.papermark.io/view/cm1ryk1n20003spr1k33q29jk

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