It’s hard to believe, but here we are, already late August. As they say, time flies when you’re busy. Since we started this project, we’ve had to deal with loads of problems every day. It’s only when I stop and take a look back now and then that I’m amazed to see how much more we’ve achieved in just two months than I ever thought we would. The best thing about entrepreneurship is working out how to get the best results with limited resources. It’s really hard to get everything right, so sometimes it’s best to just accept “good enough”. Although my life is almost entirely consumed by Syrovex and OwlVigil—and it’s exhausting—this kind of exhaustion feels completely different from what I experienced in my previous jobs. We’re making progress and breakthroughs every day, and solving new problems – it’s an amazing feeling.
Today, I thought I’d take a break from my usual routine to have a think about the last two months and document everything we’ve achieved.
Market Observations & Customer Feedback
When I introduced Syrovex two months ago, I mentioned that as large language models gradually mature, AI is evolving from a chat tool into the next generation of enterprise infrastructure. The thing that’s really holding back the use of AI isn’t the tech itself, but whether companies can use it securely, reliably, and in a controlled way.
After getting to know and work with lots of different companies and teams over the past two months, I’m more convinced of this assessment than ever.
The market today is full of “AI capabilities” and tools that can quickly produce demos. With Vibe Coding, a team can build a prototype in just a few days, or even a few hours – which used to take months. But there’s still a long road between a demo and putting it into production. What businesses really care about is often not who’s top of the leaderboard, or all the latest buzzwords like “Agent,” “MCP,” or “Workflow.” Their questions tend to be much more practical: So, I was wondering if AI could actually help my company improve efficiency. Where should we start?
Once a company has actually tried an AI application, their focus quickly shifts. One thing that’s caught us off guard is that pretty much all the companies we’ve worked with have adopted a more positive attitude after seeing the real-world results AI delivers. And, of course, they start to ask questions (what I call an entrepreneur’s acumen and intuition): So, where’s the money for AI actually going, then? I’d like to know how many different teams are using tokens. Is sensitive data being sent to places it shouldn’t be? If a model suddenly becomes unavailable, can business operations continue as normal? What permissions should the employees and systems have? If something goes wrong, can we figure out exactly what happened and audit it?
These questions might not sound as exciting as those on model capabilities, but they’re actually key to figuring out if AI can be successfully integrated into a business. That’s exactly what OwlVigil is here for: making sure businesses can understand, manage and use AI with confidence, and get all the efficiency benefits it offers.
After looking at things for the last couple of months, I’ve got three pretty clear things to say.
Market education is almost in place
As we thought would happen, people’s views on AI have changed a lot. These days, when people talk about AI, most businesses don’t see it as some vague, abstract idea. Instead, they’re thinking about how it can help them get more done while cutting costs. Businesses are really interested in AI, and they’re keen to get going.
Basically, there’s not much point these days in showing businesses that “AI is useful”. They really want to know where AI can add value and how to get started as soon as possible.
Enterprises need more than just tools
Although lots of businesses are interested in AI, most non-technical business managers still see it mainly as chat tools like ChatGPT. Some people have heard of “agents” and “workflows”, but they often don’t really know what problems these technologies can solve or how they should be integrated with existing business operations.
So, putting AI to work in a business isn’t just about buying a tool or adding a model. The real challenge is usually figuring out the right business scenarios, re-engineering existing processes, deciding which stages are best suited for AI, and designing effective ways for humans and AI to work together. You need to know your stuff when it comes to technology and business operations, but there aren’t many companies or professionals out there who can offer both.
The deeper logic behind using AI will change how a business is run, and only a few companies really want to do this, but this doesn’t mean there isn’t a lot of potential in the market for using AI.
Governance is something come in nature
To be honest, most companies don’t really get our core AI governance capabilities at first, and that’s fine. Before AI has really entered the business world, things like costs, permissions, auditing and compliance all seem like things in the distance. The main thing companies are concerned about is whether AI can create value, not how to manage it.
But once companies start using AI and see a big improvement in efficiency, it’s only natural that they’ll want to have management in place. The more people use AI, the more these problems will show up. So we’ve slowly started to realise: AI governance isn’t something companies have to do before they start using AI. Instead, it’s something that they have to do as they move from experimenting with it to using it on a large scale. Usually, companies see the efficiency gains first, then expand their use, and finally start thinking about how to manage it.
It’s a pretty natural process.
OwlVigil Officially Launched
The big day was 18 August, when we officially launched OwlVigil. Even though the product has been available for registration and use for a while, we still want to make a big deal out of the official launch of a product we’ve been working on. We chose a good date to make a joint public announcement.
We started with AI Cost Management, and over time we’ve added more and more to OwlVigil, like Multi-Provider Management, Smart Routing, Gateway Keys, Usage Tracking, Budget Control, Access Control, Audit Logs, and Compliance. Businesses can hook up with different AI providers through one easy-to-use portal, making it simple to manage how their models are used, the costs, permissions and any potential risks.
When it comes to product design, we’ve always tried to keep OwlVigil “lightweight” enough to fit in with the software, systems and workflows of enterprises, while also being the cheapest option. At the same time, we’ve also made the SDK open-source, so developers can use OwlVigil’s capabilities to build their own AI products and internal systems.
During this process, we also tried out “Vibe Coding”.
One thing that struck me was that while Vibe Coding does lower the barrier to writing code, it’s not all benefits. The system’s still as complex as ever, and relying on Vibe Coding can easily mean you miss flaws in the system design. If you don’t have experienced people on the team who can handle architecture design, task breakdown, and code reviews, it might not save time. In some cases, it could even make simple tasks more complicated. At the moment, AI can’t really do long-term, systematic design on its own. It can quickly come up with a solution that seems complete, but often this is just based on the immediate problem, and doesn’t take a step back to look at the bigger picture, including real-world scenarios, module boundaries and various trade-offs.
Obviously, there’s plenty of room for improvement in the latest version of OwlVigil. As I said before, the hard part about starting a business is also what makes it fun: you always have to fight for what you want. I’m a total geek when it comes to tech, and I often have to tell myself: “This is good enough for now.” In the past, when working on technical projects, I always wanted to polish every detail to my satisfaction before releasing it. But ever since I started this business, I’ve had to keep making trade-offs between technology, product and market. In some areas, even though I know they aren’t quite polished enough, I have to launch them first – as long as they’re safe, stable and usable – and then gradually make changes based on real user feedback.
But in any case, OwlVigil has finally evolved from architectural diagrams on a whiteboard, requirements in documents, and code on a computer into a product that can operate in real-world scenarios.
Fundraising starts
We’ve never been ones to prioritise fundraising, not because we don’t need capital, but because we prefer to focus on the fundamentals first. That means identifying real problems, building a usable product and then validating our assumptions through customer feedback. But once the product was officially launched, we began facing another challenge that no startup can avoid – marketing. Having great technology isn’t necessarily going to make a great product, and a great product isn’t necessarily going to attract customers on its own. This is especially true in the enterprise market, where every step—from product positioning, brand building, and customer outreach to sales, deployment, training, and long-term support—requires continuous investment.
Companies aren’t just buying a piece of software. They also need to check that the company is trustworthy, that the product can operate stably over the long term, and that the team can understand and solve their specific problems. You can’t do these tasks just with technology and the product itself; you also need time, talent and resources. Capital can’t solve all our problems, but it can help us buy more time, refine our product faster, build our team, and enable OwlVigil to reach more customers who really need it.
So, once the product officially launched and we’d done the initial market validation, we decided to launch a funding round to boost our product capabilities and speed up market expansion and customer acquisition.
I’m no stranger to fundraising, but it’s a whole different ball game when I’m in the founder’s shoes. Before, when I was evaluating a startup, I focused mainly on assessing its market, product and team. Now, I need to distil what we’ve accomplished over the past period, our understanding of the industry, and our vision for the coming years into a clear narrative: Why now? So why should you consider this market? Why us? Do businesses really need a product like this? What do we see that other teams don’t? So, even if we’re on the right track, how can we make sure we’re always ahead of the game? You can’t get the answers to these questions from a polished pitch deck alone. At the end of the day, it’s all about the product, the customers, and the team.
AI is definitely one of the most popular startup trends right now, and there are always loads of big stories in the news about it. But we don’t just want to tell a story about the future of AI; we want to start with the problems we’re facing today and, step by step, build a product that truly creates value. We’re hoping that in the long run, OwlVigil will become the go-to infrastructure for enterprises using AI. Whatever models enterprises use, whatever apps they develop, and whatever workflows they build, they’ll be able to run them in a secure, controllable and transparent environment. For now, we just need to keep working hard to solve each client’s specific problems.
At the moment, we’re talking to a bunch of investment firms and can’t wait to hear what they have to say. If you’re interested in Enterprise AI, AI Infrastructure, or AI Governance, and you believe in what we’re doing, please feel free to reach out to me. (Check out our pitch deck – we’ve put a lot of thought into it and we’re sure you’ll be impressed.)
Two months
Two months isn’t a long time, but it’s not a short time either. It’s not about proving a company’s success, but it’s been enough to turn an idea into a product, bring together a team of people who were once spread out all over the place, and start getting real feedback from the market.
The biggest change since I started this project is probably how I think about time. Two months ago, that might have meant finishing a few projects or having lots of meetings, but now every day seems to decide the company’s next steps. Sometimes, anxiety can set in. Are we getting the product out there quickly enough? Are we heading in the right direction? Why haven’t the clients responded yet? So, where’s the money and people going to come from for the next phase? These questions keep cropping up every day, and they don’t just go away just because we’ve reached a milestone. But that’s probably what starting a business is all about. You can’t wait for everything to be just right, and you can’t know the right answers before you start. We just have to keep making judgments, taking action, and validating our decisions based on the info we’ve got, and then just keep moving forward.
There’s still a lot of uncertainty ahead, and we’re bound to encounter even more problems we’ve never faced before. But as I said two months ago, it’s a huge privilege to be living in an era where AI is truly transforming the world – and to have the opportunity to be a part of it firsthand.
