FAI Plastic Manufacturing Lead

started the meeting by saying that Portugal has a productivity problem, to which the other party responded that it was more of a problem with the workforce capacity within Portugal and other countries. We talked about the lack of workers and how companies are starting to look for better technology to compensate for that. Additionally, many CEOs, who have traditionally held onto old-school approaches, are now being succeeded by their sons, who tend to be more open to exploring new possibilities. We also started talking about the use cases we wanted to validate. There was a tendency noted that Portugal (among other countries) tends to avoid buying equipment unless strictly necessary.

We were then told about how we needed to have a really specific pitch for the companies to be interested in buying rather than trying to sell all the functionalities we could do. discussed our different use cases and asked which one he would sell for the other companies. The answer was that it was case by case and it depended, but the solution he talked more about was AI as a technical assistant to a chief of production. It was proposed that we sell directly to consultant companies or work with them.

The topic shifted to why we failed our deal with his company (the one that sells plastic machines) last time, and he said that it was most likely because of price and budget, but he would look into it.

After some more talking, mainly of the various things that were possible for us to do with AI, he thought that an interesting use case for him was regarding the AI helping with the management of the dates, costs, deadlines, etc., for knowing when he can fabricate one piece without being detrimental for a more urgent one (manage the fabrication process so things are done in the most efficient way possible by knowing which pieces to prioritize at every given time). It was decided that we could try to do a proof of concept of that solution if presented with data.

We suggested another meeting, and meanwhile, he ended up committing to:

• Look into why our original deal didn't go through.

• Talk with a friend in a consulting company about us and arrange a meeting with us.

• Get data so we can test if the solution he wants is viable.

 

 

What to pull out:

• The problem they want to solve in their words
Customer benefit- Urgent problems won’t make us miss deliverables and deadlines

• Reasons to believe
what would the product need to demonstrate for:
we got a list of 5 questions the solution would need to be able to answer

• Monetization
How much would you pay us if we demonstrated all these things