In this episode of Just Curious, Stu Willson sits down with Alex Gruebele and Chandler Gonzales, Co-founders of Tau9 Labs, a company building custom AI tools for manufacturers when off-the-shelf software doesn’t fit. They reveal how they helped an injection molding manufacturer transform its quoting process from hours to seconds—boosting conversion rates, winning new business, and showing how contextual AI can outperform any one-size-fits-all SaaS solution.

Chapters:

00:00 – Intro
01:30 – How Tau9 Labs started: bridging the digital-physical gap
03:10 – Why manufacturers have struggled with off-the-shelf software
05:00 – Hidden value in unstructured factory data
07:00 – AI use cases: downtime, quoting, and tribal knowledge
09:00 – How Tau9 Labs identifies high-ROI problems (not just trendy AI ideas)
14:30 – Case study: a manufacturer’s journey to instant quoting
17:30 – Designing the 7-click quoting experience
19:20 – How AI sped up software development 3–5×
21:40 – Early conversion results and customer growth
23:30 – When to build vs. buy AI software
27:00 – Why on-site engineers outperform offshore teams
29:40 – Lessons learned from industrial AI deployments
32:10 – Who Tau9 Labs serves best
33:50 – Closing thoughts

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