Teach instead of build for infinite scale—shift from 'we will do it for you' to 'we will teach you how' unlocks product leverage
When a major retailer asked Cotera to build an AI solution for detecting stolen products on Poshmark, Ibby's response was: 'We are NOT going to build this for you. We will teach your team how to build it themselves.' They held a training session where the operations team built the agent together. Result: the entire ops team got excited and started building more agents on their own. The shift from 'we will build custom solutions for you' to 'we will teach you to build your own' is the difference between consulting (bounded by your time) and product (unbounded by customer capability). When you teach, customers can solve problems you didn't even know they had.
When to use
Use this when you find yourself doing custom builds for every customer. Instead of building solutions, build enablement—templates, training, frameworks that let customers build their own solutions. Especially powerful for platforms and no-code/low-code tools where the product itself is the building blocks.
Don't do this
Saying yes to every custom request because it generates revenue, ending up as an expensive consulting firm that happens to have software. Or building a product so complex that customers still need you to configure it for them—that's not teaching, that's just outsourced implementation.
1 Founder Who Did This
Major retailer asked for custom AI solution to detect stolen products on Poshmark. Instead of building it for them, Ibby held training session where retailer's ops team built it themselves in Cotera. Entire team got excited, started building more agents.