🎙️ Backstage Tech by George Helgesen

Richard Mole is the founder of Same Day Courier Network (SDCN) — a well-respected B2B freight exchange marketplace in the UK, built over the last decade without outside investment. Richard has spent his career in transport, growing SDCN into a platform trusted by thousands of couriers, owner-drivers, and large transport companies.

In this episode, Richard breaks down how copycats keep failing in this market and why he believes human-first customer service still beats AI in the transport industry.

Topics covered:

• Why one of SDCN's competitors stopped taking new customers
• How Richard built SDCN over 10 years with no investors
• Why human-first customer service still beats AI in transport
• How competitors literally try to copy SDCN — screenshots, devs, the works
• How SDCN helps couriers kill "dead miles" and why TMS integrations are the next unlock

If you're a B2B software founder or you plan on building a transport tech solution — this episode is for you.

👉 Follow George:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/georgehelgesen/
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@georgehelgesen

👉 Follow Richard:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/richard-mole-2431172b/
• SDCN: https://samedaycouriernetwork.com/

▶️ Watch the full video on YouTube: https://youtube.com/@georgehelgesen 👉 

Let's connect on LinkedIn — send me a request and mention the podcast.

In episode #16 of "Backstage Tech", we're walking through a 10-point framework to tell whether you're talking to a real development partner — or a devshop that will burn your time and cash.

Pulling from 8+ years working shoulder-to-shoulder with software founders, here's what separates a partner who moves your business forward from a vendor who hides behind documentation the moment something goes wrong:

1. Ownership mindset — devshops spend your money, partners make you money. You feel the difference in the first conversation
2. Founder accessibility — if you can't get anyone with real authority on a call before signing, imagine what happens after you pay
3. Team retention — check LinkedIn before you commit. High turnover is a red flag that tells you everything about the culture
4. Proactive suggestions — order takers wait for instructions. Real partners show up with ideas before you even ask
5. Chase dynamic — if you're always hunting them down for updates, that's your answer. A real partner is chasing you

If you own, fund, or lead a software product, this episode gives you a practical checklist to use on your next agency discovery call — before you wire a single dollar.

👉 Want to talk through how to find the right dev partner for your product? Email [email protected] or connect with me on LinkedIn.

Steve Mast is an entrepreneur, AI advisor, and co-founder of Twenty44 — a company helping organizations move from AI experimentation to real adoption. Steve spent over 3 decades building digital companies, including Delvinia, where he built Asking Canadians and Methodify before selling to Sago in 2021. Now he's focused on one problem: why 45% of organizations have invested in AI, but only 12% of employees are actually using it.

In this episode, Steve breaks down why AI adoption is a people challenge, not a technology one, how Twenty44 diagnoses workforce readiness, and what it actually takes to move organizations from hype to habit.

Topics covered:

• Why 45% of organizations have AI but only 12% of employees use it
• Why most organizations are built on executors — and why that changes everything about AI training
• How Twenty44's 3-step framework closes the adoption gap
• Why embedding AI inside Salesforce drove more adoption than any standalone app
• How to benchmark your workforce's AI readiness before spending on tools
• Why AI is the most accessible technology in history — and why that still isn't enough
• Whether the Twenty44 assessment platform will become a self-serve SaaS product

If you're an enterprise leader or founder trying to turn AI investment into actual results — this episode is the playbook.

👉 Follow George:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/georgehelgesen/
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@georgehelgesen

👉 Follow Steve:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stevemast/
• Twenty44: https://twenty44.co/

Ian Ash is the co-founder of Dig Insights — a global market research consultancy with its own SaaS platform, Dig One, trusted by McDonald's, Coca-Cola, Meta, Pernod Ricard and dozens of world-leading brands. What started as a traditional consultancy grew into an AI-native market research company with patented algorithms, a 30% compound annual growth rate over its first decade, and a successful exit to Behringer Capital.

In this episode, Ian breaks down how Dig Insights evolved from traditional consulting into a tech-driven platform, why "service as a software" is replacing SaaS, and why he came back from semi-retirement because AI is moving too fast to watch from the sidelines.

Topics covered:

• How Dig Insights went from traditional consultancy to building their own SaaS platform
• How their patented "Tinder for products" algorithm predicts market share from simple swipes
• Why winning Coca-Cola and Pernod Ricard globally was a step change for the company
• Why legacy SaaS companies that bolt on AI get punished
• How AI skills and agents are replacing prompt engineering
• Why Ian came back after exiting to Behringer Capital

If you're a founder, product leader, or investor trying to figure out where AI fits into your SaaS business — this episode lays out the playbook from someone who's lived it.

👉 Follow George:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/georgehelgesen
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@georgehelgesen

👉 Follow Ian:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ian-ash-dig/
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@ianash8585
• Dig Insights: https://diginsights.com

▶️ Watch the full video on YouTube: https://youtube.com/@georgehelgesen

👉 Let's connect on LinkedIn — send me a request and mention the podcast.

In episode #13 of "Backstage Tech", we're walking through a simple 5-step framework to build a custom AI agent for your software product — without blowing your budget on something your users will never touch again.

Pulling from 8+ years working shoulder-to-shoulder with software founders, here's what separates the teams that ship AI agents that work from the ones that waste $20-30K and ship nothing:

1. Start with the right problem — not every workflow deserves an agent. Ask yourself: where do your users spend 80% of their time? That's your starting point
2. Define input and output before anyone opens a code editor — a plain-text description of what goes in and what comes out is worth more than 3 weeks of dev time spent guessing • Validate for the price of a coffee subscription — a Claude Project or MyGPT with your real data can tell you if the idea holds water before you spend a dime on engineering
3. Turn your prototype into a spec — the master prompt you tested becomes the foundation of your PRD. It's not glamorous, but it's the thing that keeps your build from going sideways
4. Understand what you're actually paying for — LLM costs can be invisible until they're not. Knowing your token burn per action is the difference between a smart feature and a financial surprise

If you own, fund, or lead a software product, this episode gives you the exact playbook to go from "I have no idea where to start" to a tested, documented, cost-aware AI agent.

👉 Want to talk through how to implement this for your product? Email [email protected] or connect with me on LinkedIn.

Henry Lynch is the CTO and co-founder of Vsimple — an AI-powered process automation platform trusted by ProLift Toyota, RWM Casters, Blue & Co, and dozens of manufacturers across North America. While most competitors hand you a signup form and leave you to figure it out, Vsimple takes the opposite approach — designing, implementing, and supporting every workflow with a hands-on customer success team.

In this episode, Henry breaks down the reality of AI-driven process automation, why self-serve onboarding fails complex workflows, and how Vsimple helped ProLift Toyota double their business without growing their admin team.

Topics covered:

• How ProLift Toyota doubled their business without adding headcount
• Why Vsimple replaces CRMs for some clients — and integrates for others
• What vAI is and how their AI agent works autonomously in the background
• Why hands-on onboarding beats self-serve for complex workflows
• How they configure workflows entirely from the UI — no code required
• What's next: AI that runs scheduled checks while you sleep

If you're a founder in manufacturing, distribution, or dealerships drowning in spreadsheets and email chaos — this episode shows you what a real process automation partner looks like.

👉 Follow George:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/georgehelgesen
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@georgehelgesen

👉 Follow Henry:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/henry-lynch-6310a7100/
• Vsimple: https://vsimple.com

🎥 Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@georgehelgesen 👉 Let's connect on LinkedIn — send me a request and mention the podcast.

In episode #11 of "Backstage Tech", I'm calling out the 5 mistakes that kill MVPs before they ever launch — and what to do instead.

After 8+ years working with founders who've burned through budgets building products nobody wanted, I'm sharing the real-world fixes that actually work:

• Building Without Commitment — get contracts signed before writing code.
• Building Everything All At Once — start with ONE painful feature, scale from there.
• Building Everything for Everyone — attack 50% of the market first, then expand.
• Spending Too Much on Validation — 10% of budget max. Ads before code.
• Skipping Distribution Strategy — know how you'll get customers before you build.

If you own, fund, or lead a software product, this episode gives you the reality check before you write a single line of code.

👉 Want the MVP Validation Cheatsheet? Hit me up on LinkedIn and I'll send it over. Or if you'd like to dive into your specific product challenge, email [email protected] or connect with me on LinkedIn.

Rafael Franco spent 20 years leading product and engineering for companies like Influencer.com and Atlassian, managing $50M+ portfolios. Now he's a fractional CPTO helping startups scale — and building his own SaaS product, AdsForBands, helping artists sell out their shows.

In this episode, Rafael breaks down the reality of building with AI, why most founders confuse "it works" with "production-ready," and what separates successful products from expensive failures.

Topics covered:

• Why 70% of his product took 2 weeks but 30% took 2 months
• The Cursor refactoring disaster that nearly destroyed everything
• What "product engineers" are and why they're the future
• Why AI makes validation MORE important, not less
• The brutal truth about vibe coding vs. production-ready code
• How to validate before you build (and avoid wasting months)

If you're a founder considering AI instead of a dev team, this is required listening.

👉 Follow George:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/georgehelgesen
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@UCuVBXySjBgR-y7tMYDxdfuQ

👉 Follow Rafael:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rafaelsoaresfranco
• Website: https://www.rafconsultancy.com
• Ads for Bands: https://www.adsforbands.ai
• Brain of J: https://www.youtube.com/@brainofj-pearljamtributeband

🎥 Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@georgehelgesen

👉 Let's connect on LinkedIn — send me a request and mention the podcast.

In episode #9 of "Backstage Tech", we're tackling the bottleneck every software founder hits: too many customer requests, too many ideas, too few hands to get things done.

Pulling from 8+ years working with founders stuck at the growth ceiling — you've got paying customers, over $1M in ARR, things are moving, but not fast enough — I'm sharing 3 battle-tested systems that help you scale without burning out your team:

• Prioritization Framework: What to NEVER Give an Outsourcer — score your backlog on 4 variables (business impact, urgency, product knowledge, technical complexity) and the framework automatically tells you what to build internally, what to outsource with supervision, and what to fully hand off.
• Agile Release Train: Stop the "One More Thing" Syndrome — set strict deploy dates (once per week or every two weeks), and no matter what customers request, features only ship on those dates. Feature not ready? It misses the train and waits for the next one.
• Build vs Buy: The ONE HOUR Decision Framework — score BUILD signals (core differentiation, custom requirements, data control, long-term value) vs BUY signals (time pressure, commodity function, maintenance burden, available solutions) and get your answer in one hour.

If you own, fund, or lead a software product, this episode gives you three frameworks you can implement today to scale faster with the team you have.

👉 Want all three frameworks? Hit me up on LinkedIn and I'll send you the complete templates. Or if you'd like to dive into your specific scaling challenge, email [email protected] or connect with me on LinkedIn.

👉 Let's connect on LinkedIn — send me a request and mention the podcast.

In episode #8 of "Backstage Tech", we're breaking down your 2026 product playbook — and if you're still playing by the old rules, your competitors are moving at warp speed while you're left in the dust.

Pulling from 8+ years working shoulder-to-shoulder with software founders, I'm exposing 5 non-negotiable shifts that separate winners from the ones left behind:

• AI Is Table Stakes — saying "we use AI" is like saying "we use SaaS." Nobody cares anymore. What differentiates you in 2026: solving NEW problems, delivering more accurate results, or shipping faster than anyone else. The word "AI" in your pitch deck is just background noise now
• User Expectations Changed Forever — your users don't care HOW you build, they care what they can DO. They expect to process data in plain English (not build complex reports), pull insights instantly (not export CSVs), and handle unstructured data automatically. Manual workflows? That's the old world
• Speed Is Your Competitive Moat — startups where 30-50% of code is AI-generated are shipping while you're still planning. Engineers who can't shift to AI-powered coding (Claude Code, Cursor) will be left behind. At ProCoders, our engineers create entire teams of AI agents: PM, front-end, back-end, QA — all AI agents
• Data Policies Are the New Litmus Test — investors don't ask "Are you using AI?" They ask: Where is data stored? What gets sent to LLMs? How do you handle PII? The nightmare scenario: your customer's billion-dollar proposal gets processed by your AI agent — did it just go to ChatGPT?
• Product Cycles Went 10X Faster — morning call with client gets recorded, midday AI writes the entire epic, afternoon Claude generates DoR/DoD, end of day test instructions are ready. The old 3-day documentation bottleneck? Gone. Use AI for grunt work while humans maintain strategy

If you own, fund, or lead a software product, this episode reveals the 2026 reality where the game changed and it's not changing back.

👉 Want to talk through how to implement these shifts for your product? Email [email protected] or connect with me on LinkedIn.