SF AI Labs

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the VP of consulting at an employee listening solutions provider. We provide AI and other technology solutions to help companies listen to their employees. I work in client delivery, sales, and product development.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with SF AI Labs?

We needed help creating a chatbot for our reporting dashboard that we deliver to our clients.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

SF AI Labs has created an AI chatbot for our reporting dashboard. We started with a strategy session, during which all our partners met with Arthur and Dirk-Jan. We talked through what we were trying to achieve, and the team asked many questions about our technology stack and our goals. After that strategy session, SF AI Labs came back to us with a recommendation on how to build the chatbot.

Since then, SF AI Labs has provided progress updates and shown us what the tool is looking like. Sometimes, they need us to review the tool responses to help train the AI or provide documents to train the AI on. Now, the tool is ready, and we're just waiting for a client to implement it with. SF AI Labs will accompany us for that first implementation to ensure everything goes well.

SF AI Labs has also offered post-implementation support if we need to customize the tool or want something different. The team has also offered options for cyber threat detection or on-screen scanning.

As for the technology stack, SF AI Labs has used OpenAI. We’ve trained the chatbot based on the latest OpenAI model. We’ll have an on-prem system that will be closed to our content now that it’s taught. This is required because of our client’s security requirements when dealing with employee data.

What is the team composition?

We work most closely with the co-founders, Dirk and Arthur. We also work with a teammate who is working on the AI. I know there are other engineers behind the scenes.

How did you come to work with SF AI Labs?

We started with a sales process where we evaluated five vendors. We chose SF AI Labs because they came up on top for all of our requirements. We contacted the team through a referral; my husband had previously worked with Arthur and thought highly of him.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve invested $20,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in April 2025, and our partnership is ongoing. 

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

The quality of SF AI Labs’ work has been impeccable. We’ve demoed the chatbot to several potential clients, giving us a chance with some potential clients where we might not usually get very far in the process. We have a few clients who are really excited to implement the tool in the fall. It’s on the books to be implemented by a Fortune 500 organization in early November, and we’re really excited about that.

We often struggle to find vendors to work with us because they don’t understand what we do or how our data structures are set up. SF AI Labs has taken the time to understand what we do clearly. They’ve done much work between sessions to learn about what we do. Because of that understanding, SF AI Labs has quickly turned around a great product. 

Moreover, we haven’t had to ask them to do any rework, which is unique. We have many smart teammates who often ask for rework. SF AI Labs has delivered above expectations and hasn’t gone over budget. We wouldn’t have the chatbot if it weren’t for SF AI Labs.

How did SF AI Labs perform from a project management standpoint?

We have weekly phone calls with SF AI Labs, during which they provide progress updates. We’ve taken a long time to test and give feedback, but the team has always been ahead of their timelines. The team uses Notion to keep track of the project. We also use Google Docs to collaborate on different documents and emails in between. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

SF AI Labs is very smart and technically oriented. The team has been able to take our vision, which was far down the line of what we wanted to do, and bring it to life step by step. They also understand the very specific constraints of our industry. I’ve been really impressed with how well the product stays within our requirements.

Are there any areas they could improve?

It's really hard to think of something they could improve. The team is super responsive, nice, and smart. Everything we’ve asked for has been met, and more.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Ask many questions because Dirk and Arthur have so much experience in this space. They’re really good at guiding you. You get so much more if you ask the questions. The team has a wealth of resources and knowledge. For example, I struggled to assemble some of the tool's knowledge base, and Dirk had all these ideas on how to make it much faster. I would have never known if I hadn’t asked.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m co-founder of a tech company creating a clinical decision-making tool for physicians.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with SF AI Labs?

We had a lot of subject matter expertise in-house, but didn’t have the technical expertise to help us understand the pathway to creating an AI-fueled solution.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

SF AI Labs provided us with custom software and AI development consulting. The team built a product roadmap for us; we needed them to create a plan to show us how our solution could be done. We had several rapid sessions with SF AI Labs; we met for about an hour and a half each time over six weeks. During those meetings, we laid out our vision, and they helped us iterate into an actual software design. They also helped us understand what we would need technically, what our stack might look like, and how we might make the product more scalable and revenue-generating.

What is the team composition?

We worked with Arthur (CEO) and DJ.

How did you come to work with SF AI Labs?

SF AI Labs was referred to me by a colleague in China, who has herself been a founder multiple times. She didn't go with SF AI Labs because she was looking for a CTO, and Arthur wasn't interested in that. However, when I talked to her about my project, it came to light that Arthur and his team were interested in doing AI consultancy work, so she thought they might be a match for me, which it was — a match made in heaven. They offered exactly what we needed at the time we needed it, so we went with them.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent around $2,500.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked together between February–April 2025.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

SF AI Labs helped us save a lot of time. It was their idea to create this plan for us so that we could understand what we needed to do. They were educating us as tech novices, which was very helpful. We didn’t want to get taken advantage of by other people in the AI landscape who would charge us too much money for the correct services, which has happened to me in the past. I've spent thousands of dollars with an AI company. This time, I didn't want to invest a lot and was very careful. 

SF AI Labs really helped us understand what the landscape and a reasonable rate looked like for development if we chose to go with them in the future. I loved working with Arthur and his team because they didn't apply any pressure. They were very honest and open about what they could and couldn't do, and were incredibly supportive. 

Moreover, we are in our startup phase, so we didn't have a lot of money, and we were pre-seed. SF AI Labs worked really rapidly, but in such a thorough manner. Overall, the team exceeded my expectations.

How did SF AI Labs perform from a project management standpoint?

They delivered on time and on budget. They provided us with more than we were expecting. We used Notion for project management.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They have deep technical knowledge and a lot of heart. They were interested in learning and understanding what we were trying to accomplish and then iterating and helping to support that without pressing us toward solutions that were more in line with what might be better for them. I really appreciated their approach.

Are there any areas they could improve?

When we engaged them, they were still setting up some of their processes for final report generation. At this point, they've probably solved these issues. However, these were very tiny things that weren’t a big deal.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Be honest with them about what you need. They’re very good with ambiguity and creating a solid plan from brainstorming and creative thinking.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the Managing Director of Product Management at Aperian. Aperian is a learning platform for growing cultural competence and team effectiveness through live training, self-paced learning, assessments, and more.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire SF AI Labs to accomplish for your company?

We needed help ideating two potential AI-powered products to add to our learning platform. We also needed help building a proof of concept for one of the ideas.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

SF AI Labs helped us ideate two potential AI-powered products. The team also created a prototype for one of the products. The prototype was for enhanced and personalized advice on a comparison between two users' work style assessment results. It included a simple site where we could adjust settings for the two users, add more contextual information, and then examine the output from each comparison.

What is the team composition?

We worked with 2 teammates from SF AI Labs.

How did you come to work with SF AI Labs?

We found them on Upwork. We chose them because they had high ratings, were close to our geographic location, and had the expertise we were looking for.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked together from July 2025–October 2025.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

We’re hoping to do more user acceptance testing internally. Our takeaways from the project include a Notion site with project plans and containerized code to be shared with our developers' GitHub repositories.

How did SF AI Labs perform from a project management standpoint?

They were organized and delivered on time. We primarily communicated through virtual meetings and emails.

What did you find most impressive about them?

We were impressed with their ability to take rough ideas and bring them to life as a proof of concept relatively quickly.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Their overall meeting facilitation could improve, but that will come with time and more experience.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the founder of ClassicGAS, a community-driven platform dedicated to celebrating, restoring, and enhancing classic cars with a focus on performance, authenticity, and expert knowledge sharing.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire SF AI Labs to accomplish for your classic car community platform?

We needed help building the software architecture for an AI platform. We also needed help with product positioning and market analysis.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

SF AI Labs has built the complete software architecture for our AI platform. The team has also helped us with product positioning, market analysis, and product development.

What is the team composition?

We’ve worked with three teammates from SF AI Labs.

How did you come to work with SF AI Labs?

We found them through an online search. We chose them because of their range of services, cost, and level of expertise.

How much have you invested with them?

So far, we’ve spent $15,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in November 2024, and the engagement is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

SF AI Labs has completed our product positioning, core framework, software architecture and development, market analysis, tech stack selection, AI product strategy, and MVP roadmap. The team has delivered the following results:

• Our positioning statement has been approved, and more than 80% of our target audience validates our value proposition.
• SF AI Labs has completed a competitive analysis of our top five competitors and achieved more than 90% messaging consistency across channels.
• They’ve implemented 100% of our core modules and achieved more than 85% unit test coverage.
• Our platform scales to 2x our projected load with less than 200ms response time, and the team has completed and reviewed the documentation.
• SF AI Labs’ architecture has been approved by our review board, and they’ve achieved a technical debt ratio of less than 10% and a maintainability index of more than 80.
• The team has completed the initial deployment with zero critical defects and delivered a market research report.
• They’ve defined our TAM, SAM, and SOM with data and completed more than 15 customer interviews.
• SF AI Labs has made more than three product decisions based on their findings and documented and finalized our tech stack.
• The team has met our baseline performance benchmarks, kept our infrastructure costs within ±10% of our forecast, and tested 100% of our required third-party API integrations.
• They’ve documented more than three prioritized AI use cases and validated more than two use cases with PoC or simulation.
• SF AI Labs has completed an ethics and compliance review and had our AI roadmap approved by our stakeholders.
• The team has finalized and approved our MVP roadmap, mapped 100% of our critical MVP features, and kept our delivery timeline within ±15% variance.
• They’ve achieved more than 90% stakeholder satisfaction on the roadmap.

How did SF AI Labs perform from a project management standpoint?

They deliver on time every time. We communicate via video chat.

What did you find most impressive about them?

We’re impressed with their breadth of knowledge.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, there aren't any.