STEVE SANFORD
The way small businesses survive just got rewritten.
Pivot to AI, or get passed by a competitor half your size.
Forty years building companies. A pandemic erased every client I had. Now I'm making the AI pivot in public, so you don't have to make it alone.
THE SHORT VERSION
Every small business is about to face this pivot. I've made it before. Watch me make this one.
I'm an engineer by training and a builder by instinct. For 40 years my real job has been one thing: find a problem worth solving, figure out if I can solve it, and ask whether it can become a business. Ad agencies, production studios, film, consulting. Different industries, same engine.
Then a global pandemic took every client I had. Not because I made a bad call. Because of something nobody could control. Profitable companies, gone in a few weeks.
So I did what I've always done. I found the next problem and built. This time on AI. And for the first time I built something that runs without a room full of people. That's Contero.
WHY I'M FILMING IT
Most small businesses are about to hit the same wall I did. Pivot to AI, or get passed. The trouble is nobody shows them what that actually looks like from the inside. The honest version, not the highlight reel.
So I'm documenting it. A video series tracking the real launch of Contero as a SaaS. What's working, what's breaking, what I'd change. If you run a business and you know you need to make this move but you're not sure where to start, follow along. It's for you.
TRACK RECORD
- 01Four decades across advertising, production, film, and AI
- 02Bet on streaming media before most people had heard the word — early, not wrong
- 03Ran studios and major brand campaigns
- 04Founder of Simulus AI and Contero
WHAT I BELIEVE
Is your expertise future-proof?
The risk was never AI. It's standing still.
I don't prompt. I have conversations.
AI is a tool to reach a goal, not a search box.
Slop is killing AI.
As many agents challenge the work as make it. Human prompted, human approved.
Technology isn't the point. The application is.
The question is whether it solves a problem someone will pay for.
WRITING
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Follow the build. The whole thing.
The wins, the hard parts, and exactly how I'm making the pivot to AI in real time.