khalaf.ai

Everyday billions of critical actions—performed by surgeons, farmers, forklift drivers—fade away without leaving behind accessible, structured data. Meanwhile, software industries thrive because of their endless digital footprints.

Whatever data exists is already hoarded by the incumbents who built the machines. John Deere can figure out every seed planted; Intuitive Surgical knows every tremor of a scalpel. In a way, they're the only eyes in the room.

Software is no exception here; Proxycurl built a $10 million ARR business on scraped LinkedIn data until lawsuits forced their closure. Shaky foundations are turning into proprietary lock-ins.

Owning the data pipeline is more powerful than owning the best model. Once a vendor controls the raw footage, lock-in precedes intelligence and lock-in is permanent.

My Solution for Founders

You are not competing with the OEM.

Instead of challenging incumbents head-on, provide immediate autonomy benefits through retrofit hardware. I would pitch a simple proposition:

"Let us bolt this kit onto your fleet. You get instant autonomy features tomorrow; we both get more data."

Collaborating with nimble, intelligent teams is a powerful bet for institutions weighed down by bureaucracy and lack of intelligent talent.

Take Control of the Data Pipeline

Barrier-to-entry for hardware is at the lowest it's ever been. While you won't be building forklifts & assembly lines, you'll build add-on devices that capture even more data.

Productive value-adds can capture the same valuable data with a fraction of the overhead. Imagine a self-driving kit fitted onto a forklift that collects data on warehouses, performance, and use-cases.

Once the flywheel spins—data → fine-tuned models → better autonomy → more users → more data.