A peer letter · 2026-05-28

Hi Habib and Shahysta. What we heard, and what we’d be doing for you.

Seven chapters on what SmartOne actually is, where it could go, and how a fractional CAIO with an agent subteam would help you get there.

Built from public sources, our 50-minute call on May 15, and the agents that work my desk. The use-case snapshot and the OSS-and-paid tools list you offered to send would tighten everything here. Tell me where I’m wrong.
$6M
Revenue (founder-stated)
~1,000
Madagascar staff
~60%
Amazon concentration
$100K
Monthly burn
14 yrs
Since founding

Two things from the May 15 call stuck with me. First: you already know where you need to go. What we heard on the call: the signals are converging toward Physical AI, robotics, more intentional positioning. And the blind spot, named just as plainly: sixty percent of your revenue comes from one customer, and that customer has been your entire view of the market for two years. You are not confused about the situation. You just do not have the infrastructure to move through it yet. That is a very different problem than not seeing it.

You built SmartOne in 2012 as a French-market call center in Madagascar. A chance 2016 meeting with an Amazon AI researcher turned into a test, then 100 people working full-time in three months, then a full pivot to data annotation. For ten years you grew on Amazon demand, word of mouth, and ad hoc outreach. No real go-to-market. You relocated to Montreal in 2023 to get closer to North American buyers. You brought in a PhD CTO and a US-based VP of Sales to professionalize the business, and both hires did not work out. Shahysta returned as CEO in January 2026 with one mandate: secure revenue as fast as possible. The company you have built is more capable than the one you are able to sell. The gap between those two things is what this site is about.

There is one question on the table that neither a market analysis nor a positioning brief can answer for you. Only the two of you can. The most important decision in front of SmartOne right now is one only you can make together. Everything else on this site assumes you will get to it. The Watch page is where we name it directly.

“we built this business in a very opportunistic way, and we weren’t from the sector. So people ask us our vision, and we’re like, “Well, we haven’t… we didn’t do the typical thing of saying, ‘Oh, I’m a founder, and I see a problem in that space, and I’m gonna be able to figure out how I’m gonna answer to that problem.’” We just had an opportunity and we jumped on it because we were about to close down the company” Discovery call, May 15 · ~39:33

Six chapters follow. Each one covers a specific question that this analysis can answer. Use the cards to navigate to whatever matters most to you right now.

02 · beneath
Beneath the labeling layer
What does your business actually do?
03 · next
Where you could go next
Which hill should you take first, and in what order?
04 · watch
The 18-month watch list
What would change our minds about everything else?
05 · product
What becomes a product, what stays human
Where does AI augment, where do humans stay?
06 · revenue
Past the Amazon dependency
How does recurring revenue actually look?
07 · team
Meet the team already on your account
Who comes with the engagement?