Frequently Asked Questions
Straight answers before we talk.
Pricing, IP, security, model choice, and how we run engagements. Written for the questions business leaders actually ask, not the ones that make good marketing copy.
Engagement & process.
How we structure our work, what we need from you, and how long things take.
What does an AI partnership with PSV look like?
We map your actual workflow before writing a line of code. Then we pick the single highest-leverage process, scope it tightly, and deploy. Once that system is running and producing measurable output, we expand, each new workflow builds on the integration work already in place. We stay on as your embedded AI team: deploying the next agents, advising as the tools change, and keeping the system current.
How is PSV different from a traditional dev shop or agency?
Dev shops scope, build, and hand off. We stay. Our engineering team comes out of research and institutional operations, and we treat your business like a long-term engineering problem, not a project to close. We don't do templates. Every engagement is custom-engineered for your workflow.
How long does a typical engagement last?
Most clients work with us for twelve-plus months because the compounding value keeps expanding. Initial deployments typically go live within four to eight weeks depending on integration complexity. After that, the engagement is continuous: new workflows, model upgrades, guardrail tuning, and expansion into adjacent processes.
Who on our team needs to be involved?
Less than you'd think. We need one executive sponsor for decision authority, and one subject-matter expert for the workflow we're automating, usually a few hours per week during scoping and deployment, tapering off once the system stabilizes. We handle everything engineering, integration, and ongoing operations.
How do you measure success?
Every engagement starts with success criteria you define: hours saved per week, cycle time reduction, error rate, throughput, or revenue impact. We instrument the system to track those metrics from day one and report them in a live dashboard. If the numbers aren't moving, we diagnose and fix before we expand scope.
Can we start small and expand later?
Yes, and we recommend it. Every engagement starts with a single high-leverage workflow: one process, scoped tightly, with clear success criteria. Once that's running, expanding is fast because the integration groundwork is already in place.
What's the minimum engagement size?
Custom engagements begin at $10,000. Beyond that floor, every engagement is scoped individually based on workflow complexity, integration depth, and operational scope. We typically start at engagements producing measurable ROI within ninety days. We don't take on work we can't defend. Monthly advisory and training plans are priced separately.
Pricing & commercial terms.
How we structure pricing, what's included, and what you can expect on billing.
How is pricing structured?
Every engagement is a custom partnership scoped individually based on workflow complexity, integration depth, and ongoing operational scope. Typical engagements run 60-80% less than a full-time hire for equivalent output, with no benefits, no ramp time, no attrition.
What's included in the monthly engagement?
System operation, model hosting, ongoing guardrail tuning, model upgrades as new versions ship, integration maintenance, monitoring and alerting, a live metrics dashboard, and direct access to the engineering team. No per-seat licensing, no usage overages on standard workflows.
Do you handle the cloud infrastructure and model token costs?
It depends on the deployment mode. When PSV manages the deployment, the engagement carries cloud infrastructure, model tokens, hosting, and monitoring, so you see one predictable number. When the system runs in your environment, your Claude Enterprise, Copilot, or ChatGPT workspace, or your own cloud, those costs stay on your existing agreements and PSV builds and operates inside them.
Are there setup fees?
Yes, discovery and initial build are typically billed as a one-time scoping and deployment fee, then the system transitions to a monthly operational retainer. All fees are disclosed up front. No hidden line items.
What's your refund policy?
Scoping fees are non-refundable (you keep the research and artifacts), but operational retainers are month-to-month after the initial commitment, you can end the engagement any time with thirty days' notice.
IP & ownership.
Who owns what we build, what happens to your data, and what leaves with you if the engagement ends.
Do we own the code you build?
Yes. What we build for you is yours: source code, infrastructure configuration, deployment scripts, and the workflows and prompts written for your firm. Any pre-existing PSV tooling we use as a building block is licensed to you on a perpetual, royalty-free, non-exclusive basis for the use your engagement covers, as our terms set out. If you ever part ways with PSV, you keep the repository and the credentials.
Who owns the models and workflows?
You do. This includes prompt templates, fine-tuning data, evaluation suites, and the orchestration logic we build for your firm. We use foundation models from providers like Anthropic and OpenAI, but the systems we build for you on top of them are yours.
What about training data?
Your data is yours. We don't use it to train shared models, we don't share it with other clients, and we don't retain rights to it. If we build evaluation datasets or fine-tuning corpora using your data, those artifacts are also yours and ship with the rest of the engagement.
Can we host the system ourselves?
Yes. Many clients start with us operating the system and later take over hosting, or host from day one on their own infrastructure. We deploy to your cloud account (AWS, GCP, Azure) when you prefer. The architecture is infrastructure-as-code, so the move is clean.
What happens if we end the engagement?
Your data stays yours, and you keep what we built for you: code, models, workflows, infrastructure configuration, and documentation. It comes with a runbook for ongoing operations, and we walk your team or another vendor through it, so they can take over without gaps. Pre-existing PSV tooling stays licensed to you for the use your engagement covers. No lock-in, no hostage data.
Security & compliance.
How we protect your data, what certifications we hold, and how we handle regulated industries.
How do you handle our data?
AES-256 at rest, TLS 1.3 in transit. Access is scoped to the specific engineers working on your engagement and logged. Production credentials are stored in a secrets manager, never in code. We follow least-privilege principles and run regular access reviews. Your data does not leave the infrastructure we build for you.
Are you SOC 2 certified?
We are pursuing SOC 2 Type II certification. In the interim, we can provide our current security controls documentation, a completed SIG Lite questionnaire, and references from clients in regulated industries. We happily sign customer security addenda and participate in vendor security reviews.
How do you handle GDPR and CCPA for our end users?
If your system processes data about EU or California residents, we build in the required controls: data subject access request handling, deletion workflows, consent tracking, and data processing records. We sign DPAs and act as a processor under both frameworks. Specific implementation depends on your existing compliance posture, we integrate with it rather than duplicate it.
What about PII in prompts?
We minimize PII exposure to foundation models by default: redaction layers for sensitive fields, hashing where possible, and prompt design that avoids sending PII when the task doesn't require it. Where PII is unavoidable, we use model providers with enterprise-grade data handling agreements (no training on inputs, zero-retention modes where available).
Do you store our business data?
Only what the system you hired us to build requires. We don't aggregate data across clients, we don't sell telemetry, and we don't retain operational data past the engagement. Logs and metrics are retained per a schedule you approve during scoping.
Do you work with regulated data?
Yes. We work with regulated data in financial services, private equity, and commercial real estate contexts, including SEC-reported entities, PII, and financial transaction data. For federal government work requiring FedRAMP or IL4+ environments, we evaluate case by case and will tell you honestly if we're not the right fit. We don't pretend to certifications we don't hold.
Can you deploy on-premise or in our own VPC for regulated environments?
Yes, when the compliance posture calls for it. We deploy to your own cloud account (AWS, GCP, Azure) or on-premise infrastructure for clients with data residency, air-gapped, or regulator-mandated isolation requirements. Open-source or self-hostable models (Llama, Mistral) cover workloads that can't touch a third-party API. We scope the architecture to your compliance envelope before we build.
Technology & implementation.
The platforms we build on, how we handle model issues, and how we integrate with your stack.
What is the Company Brain?
The institutional intelligence layer PSV builds for your firm: what it knows, how it works, and how it decides. Deals, relationships, templates, policies, and past decisions become structured context that AI can use. It deploys under the tools your team already works in, Claude, ChatGPT, or Copilot, connected through MCP, and humans approve what becomes durable firm knowledge.
What AI platforms do you build on?
We are model-agnostic. Anthropic Claude and OpenAI GPT for general-purpose reasoning, specialized models for vision, embeddings, and domain tasks, and open-source models (Llama, Mistral) where data residency or cost requirements demand it. We pick the right model for the workload, and swap as better options ship.
Can you integrate with our existing tools?
Whatever you run on. CRM (Salesforce, HubSpot, custom), ERP (NetSuite, SAP, Oracle), email, Slack, Teams, accounting platforms, data warehouses, legacy systems with SOAP or flat-file interfaces. If it has an API, we connect to it. If it doesn't, we build the adapter.
How do you handle hallucinations?
Hallucinations are a scoping problem more than a model problem. We design systems with hard guardrails: confidence thresholds, retrieval-grounded responses with citations, structured output validation, approval gates for high-stakes actions, and escalation paths when the system is outside its safe zone. Every action is logged and traceable. You always have full visibility and final authority.
What about model drift and upgrades?
We monitor model behavior against a versioned evaluation suite tied to your success criteria. When a provider ships a new model, we run it through the same suite, compare results, and either upgrade or hold. No silent upgrades that break your workflow. All changes are logged and reversible.
Do you use our data to train models?
No. Never, unless you explicitly agree and we've written it into the engagement. We use foundation models with data-handling agreements that exclude training on inputs. Any fine-tuning we do on your data produces a model that's yours alone.
What if the model provider deprecates a model?
Providers publish deprecation schedules months in advance. We track them as part of ongoing operations, test successors against your evaluation suite, and migrate before the old model turns off. Migration work is included in the operational retainer, no surprise bills.
Team & expertise.
Who founded PSV, who builds your systems, how selective we are, and what industries we know deeply.
Who founded Pacific Software Ventures?
Pacific Software Ventures (PSV) was founded in 2023 by Zed Truong, Aidan Scudder and Gedeon Baende, who run it as partners. Zed Truong is the founder of the CRE AI Institute and previously worked in institutional real estate at PGIM Real Estate and in brokerage at Voit Real Estate. Aidan Scudder is an AI and systems engineer formerly at Kochava and HPE. Gedeon Baende is a former Goldman Sachs engineer and AWS AI Scholar.
Who builds the system?
PSV's three partners and the engineering team they lead: Zed Truong on commercial real estate, Aidan Scudder on AI and systems engineering, and Gedeon Baende on AI infrastructure. The engineers are senior, with research backgrounds and production experience at scale. No offshoring, no junior-heavy teams. The people you meet on the call are the people who build, and they stay on the engagement.
Who teaches the CRE AI Institute?
Zed Truong, the founder of the CRE AI Institute, leads the program and teaches it with his PSV partners Aidan Scudder and Gedeon Baende. The Institute teaches commercial real estate professionals to run their own work with AI, on real deal files, with no coding required, and runs weekly live office hours. One lesson is free to watch before joining.
How selective is PSV about clients?
Very. We take on a limited number of engagements each quarter because every client gets the senior team's attention. We turn down work we can't defend or don't believe we can ship meaningful value on. If we're not the right fit, we'll tell you on the strategy call.
What industries do you specialize in?
Commercial real estate is our exclusive focus. We've built dedicated landing pages for every major CRE asset class: multifamily, industrial, office, retail, hotels, student housing, senior housing, manufactured housing, build-to-rent / SFR, industrial outdoor storage, cold storage, and affordable / LIHTC. We know the workflows, the data, the comp sources, and the operators inside each.
Do you handle every CRE asset class equally well?
Each deployment is configured to the asset class: multifamily rent rolls and agency debt sizing, hotel comp set data and PIPs, LIHTC AMI rent caps and HUD compliance, retail co-tenancy and CAM reconciliation, industrial WALT and tenant credit. The Company Brain layer is the same; the underwriting templates, comp sources, and reporting structures are asset-class-specific.
Getting started.
How to tell if you're ready, what the first step is, and what to expect.
What does the free AI assessment cover?
Ten minutes of structured questions about your firm, your workflows, and your current AI usage. You get an honest read on your AI maturity, the highest-value opportunities we see, and which engagement fits, if any. Qualified prospects get direct access to the calendar.
How do I know if we're ready for AI?
Start with the free AI assessment at /ai-assessment. It takes about ten minutes and tells you where your firm stands, where AI pays off first, and what the sensible next step is. If you'd rather talk it through, book a call directly.
Where does our firm start?
On the rung you are on. AI Consulting is stage one, for firms that want AI but have no policy, no owner, and no agreed starting point: we audit the firm, set the strategy and security posture with your IT function, and hand you a roadmap. Company Brain + Custom AI Agent Builds is stage two, for firms already ready to build. AI Training is stage three, for teams who now want to build the agents themselves. When the problem is already well-defined, for example mature Claude workflows that need shared intelligence, we skip stage one and go straight to implementation. This was published until August 2026 as the AI Audit. Either way, custom engagements begin at $10,000.
What's the first step?
Book a thirty-minute strategy call. We'll learn your business, identify candidate workflows, and tell you honestly whether AI will move the numbers you care about. No pitch deck, no upsell. If there's a fit, we scope. If there isn't, we say so.
How long from first call to live system?
Four to eight weeks from signed scope to first production deployment, with the first measurable output typically within the first two weeks of build. Simpler workflows can ship faster; integration-heavy or regulated deployments take longer.
Do you do a paid discovery phase?
For custom partnerships, yes. Discovery is a fixed-fee engagement (one to three weeks) that produces a detailed scope, architecture, integration plan, and success criteria. If we build the system after discovery, the discovery fee is credited against the build. If we don't build it, you keep what we produced for you.
Don't see your question? Tell us what you're evaluating and we'll give you a direct answer, usually same day.
Let's get to work.
Thirty minutes. We'll tell you whether PSV is the right partner for what you're trying to build.
Or reach us directly at zed@pacificsoftwareventures.com