Vancouver’s economy runs on trade, services and creative work more than heavy industry. The Port of Vancouver moves more cargo than any other port in Canada, downtown towers hold head offices, law firms and engineering consultancies, and studios around the region turn out film, television, games and visual effects. Most businesses here are still small, though: restaurants, clinics, design studios, contractors and shops competing for attention in one of the country’s most expensive markets.
That cost pressure shapes which technology is worth paying for. When rent and wages are high, the projects that earn their keep are the ones that remove repetitive work or recover revenue that is quietly slipping away — inquiries nobody answered on Saturday, quotes assembled by hand, the report someone rebuilds from spreadsheets every Monday. We usually start there before discussing anything more ambitious.
Plenty of Vancouver owners have already tried off-the-shelf AI tools. The usual complaint is that the tool does not know the business. Most of our AI work is about fixing exactly that: connecting a model to your real services, policies and data, and putting sensible limits on what it is allowed to do.