The honest comparison
Be AI-First vs the other 4 paths
We're not the right choice for everyone. If you have a $500K budget and a 12-month timeline, big consulting will do this for you. If you have a great engineer and 18 months, DIY is fine. Here's the matrix to help you decide.
| Feature | Be AI-First This | DIY Build it yourself | Big consulting McKinsey / BCG / Deloitte | Off-the-shelf SaaS Glean / Writer / Mendable | AI courses Section / Maven |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Time to first agent live | 6–8 weeks | 6–18 months | 12–24 weeks | Same-day, but for THEIR use case | Knowledge only — no agent |
| Real implementation, not just slides | Wizard + working code | If you finish — 70% don't | PowerPoint + maybe a POC | Their thing, not yours | Learn, then DIY anyway |
| You own the code & data | Your GitHub, your Supabase | Of course | Often gets locked in | Their platform, their lock-in | But you have nothing built |
| Cost — first year (10-person team) | $50k–$130k all-in | 0 cash + 6 months of an engineer | $200k–$1M+ | $10k–$50k/year per tool × N tools | $2k–$10k for the course only |
| Industry-specific (regulated, healthcare, finance) | Hope Hospital · DPDP-aware | Depends on your team's experience | If you pay for a specialist firm | Some have HIPAA/SOC2; many don't | Generic content |
| Methodology you can teach the next hire | Documented framework + vault | Lives in 1 person's head | If they leave a playbook | Locked in vendor docs | Course alumni |
| Continuously improves (closed-loop) | Test harness + audit log built in | Only if you build it | Engagement ends | Vendor decides what to improve | Course is static |
| Compounds across your team's work | ironbark captures every Claude session | Each engineer reinvents | Knowledge leaves with consultants | Your data ≠ their model | Course content doesn't compound |
| Talk to a real human in 1 click | Slack Connect + Cal.com always visible | Stack Overflow / Reddit | If you call your AM | Tier-1 chatbot, then queue | Forum / Discord |
| Public proof of work | 247+ shipped projects, public on GitHub | Yours to publish | NDA-locked case studies | Logos on landing page | Alumni stories (curated) |
Honest caveat
Don't pick Be AI-First if…
- • You need a McKinsey-grade transformation deck for the board (consulting wins).
- • You only need ONE specific feature (e.g., enterprise search) and a SaaS already nails it.
- • Your team won't write Markdown — even with the wizard, somebody has to put rules in plain English.
- • You expect AI to handle judgement calls without humans-in-the-loop. The framework says no.
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