You used to know what was actually happening. Now you find out when it’s already on fire.
Bring the question you have about your business. Surface asks your team, by voice or text, while it reads the numbers that go with it, and shows you where their accounts and the numbers agree and where they don’t.
Fig. 12, The house: The colonnaded courtyard of a classical house above the sea, with a stone basin, a garden bed and doorways into shaded rooms.
Questions owners bring, for example
Bring the question you already have.
Why do we win less of what we quote than we used to?
Where is the margin going on jobs that look fine?
Why do good people leave after eighteen months?
I know AI could help. Where would it actually make a difference?
You choose the question. Surface investigates that one, and does not hand you a list of problems you never asked about.
What you get
One question, answered with evidence.
The same offer every time, sized so you can judge it on one question before you decide anything else.
The question
One, about one part of the business, chosen by you
Your people
Up to ten, about fifteen minutes each, by voice or text
The numbers
The records that go with the question, read from exports of your systems as part of the assisted pilot
The brief
Each finding with the quotes and numbers behind it, and the explanation it ruled out
How it runs
Three steps, and most of the work is ours.
01
You set the question
In a first call we agree the question, the people to include and the numbers that go with it.
02
Surface talks to your people
Each person gets a private link that expires after seven days, and talks or types for about fifteen minutes, in their own time. Surface reads the numbers alongside.
03
You get the brief
We go through it with you. Each finding shows the quotes and the numbers behind it. You decide what changes.
One finding
What a finding looks like.
From an illustrative example: an owner-led consultancy that was winning less of what it quoted. The owner expected price. The evidence pointed somewhere else.
Finding for reviewIllustrative · Cat. 03
Quotes waited for a director’s review, and the slow ones won half as often.
Reported
“Every proposal goes to a director. They’re on site three days a week.”
Observed
Within each size band, quotes sent within three days won about twice as often as those sent after seven.
Prescribed
Every quote is reviewed by a director before it goes.
Ruled outPrice, as the main cause. The firm was cheaper or within 5% in 21 of 34 named losses, and the speed gap holds without the 13 dearer quotes.
Surface is built in Cape Town by Patrick Nesbitt, a chartered accountant and CFA charterholder who audited banks at KPMG and worked in equity research and private equity before building AI products. It reads evidence the way an audit does: what should happen, what did happen, and what explains the difference.
Before we begin
Questions people ask.
How long does it take my people?
About fifteen minutes each, by voice or text, whenever suits them within the seven days their link is open.
Will they be honest with an AI?
They talk or type in their own time, without a manager in the room, and choose how they are quoted. Your company sees findings, never a transcript.
What do you need from me?
The question, the people to include, and exports of the numbers that go with it. In the pilot, we work through the exports with you.
What if it finds nothing wrong?
Then the brief says the process is healthy and shows the evidence. That is a valid result.
The offer
One question, ten people, one brief.
We agree one question about one process with you, interview up to ten of your people by voice or text, read the records that go with it, and take you through a brief that shows the evidence for every finding.
