FAQ – Straight Answers on 10gen and AI
Straight answers about From Starter To Smarter, Micro Apps, your agentic business, pricing and working with us, plus the bigger questions leaders are asking about AI.
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10gen is a South African AI training and deployment business. We educate, build and govern: we teach leaders and teams to use AI well, build working AI tools and agents inside their business units, and put the governance in place to keep them safe. Human powered, AI accelerated. 10gen is a trading name of Guest Experience (Pty) Ltd, based in Durban, and is powered by our sister agency Cannect Digital.
For seventy years ROI meant Return on Investment. We measure the return on the intelligence already in your business, multiplied by AI. In practice that means four multiples: hours reclaimed, cost and errors cut, revenue grown and adoption embedded. We baseline the workflow first, then measure the multiple, so results are read off a board rather than taken on faith.
Consultancies sell decks. Agencies ship tools without adoption. Trainers teach but don’t build. 10gen does all three: senior-led, fixed-price and unit by unit, with ongoing maintenance that keeps us accountable after go-live.
Business leaders who are done dabbling: CEOs and owner-managers, finance, operations, sales and marketing, HR and people leaders, and business-unit heads. Agentic build pricing is tiered by company size, from smaller enterprises to corporates with turnover above R100m.
We’re based in Durban and work with businesses across South Africa. From Starter To Smarter runs live online, so delegates can join from anywhere in the world.
Terry Flack, Chief AI Strategist, is your single point of contact. Daren Denholm, Chief AI Architect, architects the AI builds. The 10gen delivery team from Cannect Digital (Carmin, Nabeel, Gabriel, Tevin, Emmanuel and Sinegugu) designs, builds and ships the Micro Apps and agents. See Meet Your Team.
Most clients climb a ladder: join The Daily Intelligent (free), take a seat on From Starter To Smarter, then turn the best win into a Micro App or agentify a business unit, starting with the AI Audit. If you’d rather talk first, book an executive briefing with Terry.
The 4-Week AI Accelerator Challenge: a 28-day, build-it-live programme that turns AI into working agents inside one of your business units, with every hour won logged and valued on a live board. It runs from Day 0 (Starter) to Day 28 (Smarter).
The November 2026 Masterclass runs on four Tuesdays: 3, 10, 17 and 24 November, 2–4pm SAST. The next Masterclass after that runs in January 2027.
Live online on Tuesdays from 2–4pm SAST, so you can join from anywhere in the world. It is hyper-personalised and delivered live by Terry and Daren, building on your own real workflow. It is not a video course, and sessions are not recorded.
About eleven hours in total: four two-hour live builds on Tuesdays (2–4pm SAST), plus ten minutes a day (one short lesson and one action, logged in under a minute). You set your baseline in the first session.
R45,000 per seat. There are ten seats per Masterclass, confirmed by hand.
No. If you can write an email and follow steps, you can do this. No coding is required.
A business account on ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini or Copilot. Use what your business already pays for. Business accounts only, agreed before anything is wired in.
A working agent inside a named business unit, a governed AI setup (agent register, human sign-off, kill-switch), proof on the board, the 91-page interactive workbook, AI Champion certification and a 90-day roadmap for your unit.
One to two hours back per person, per day, or your money back. Do the work and log it. If by Day 28 you haven’t averaged at least one hour back per working day, tell us and we refund you in full. It applies when you attend the live sessions, complete the daily actions and log your time on the board. Full guarantee terms will be published on the From Starter To Smarter page before launch.
Every build is live and personalised, and sessions are not recorded, so attendance matters. If you know you’ll miss a Tuesday, tell Terry beforehand so we can plan around it.
Yes. Choose the number of seats when you book. Each delegate builds on their own workflow, and the team board shows hours, value and wins per person.
A 21-question, yes-or-no assessment that takes about four minutes. You take it in the first session (Day 0) to set your baseline and again on Day 28 to measure how far you’ve moved.
The 7 Laws Of The World’s Most Advanced AI Operators, by Daren Denholm: Move At The Speed Of Thought; Intelligence That Compounds; Work Once, Earn Forever; 10× Output; Present In Your Absence; Progress You Can See; Freedom With A Leash. Each week of the programme pairs Laws with one of 10gen’s four multiples.
Delegates receive 10gen AI Champion certification. The programme is not SETA-accredited. Training spend may be claimable as skills development spend under B-BBEE; please confirm with your B-BBEE verification agent.
Turn your best win into a Micro App, or agentify a whole business unit, starting with the AI Audit.
The Daily Intelligent: AI to ROI is 10gen’s free, highly visual one-page AI briefing for business leaders. Signal, not noise.
It’s shared on the 10gen WhatsApp Channel. Message us on WhatsApp and we’ll add you. It’s free.
A 45-minute keynote by Terry Flack, AI to ROI: From Possibility to Profitability, delivered on your stage and including a working AI agent built live. R45,000.
A Half Day Strategy (R55,000) is a working session with your leadership team. A Full Day Strategy (R70,000) is a hands-on build across the business that ends with a sequenced 90-day plan signed off in the session. Both include the 10gen AI Audit. Prices exclude travel and accommodation.
Yes. Get in touch with your date, audience and format and Terry will confirm availability.
A small, fast, fixed-scope AI build: one workflow, one clear outcome, live in 4–6 weeks. Fixed scope, fixed price and fixed timeline, with ROI measured against a baseline.
A single Micro App starts from R50,000. Native / App Store apps and Business Unit Dashboards start from R150,000. Industry-specific apps are subscription-based, from R2,000 a month.
Proposal builders, meeting-to-action engines, forecasting models, compliance checkers and other proven patterns, with a catalogue for every business unit.
Tell us the workflow that hurts the most. use our 5-step scoping form or get in touch and we’ll scope the app that fixes it.
A business where AI agents handle defined jobs inside each business unit, under human oversight. We agentify one unit at a time: audit, build, govern.
A readiness baseline of one business unit: workflows, data, risk and the profit levers worth pulling first. R25,000, credited in full towards your build, and included with the Half and Full Day Strategy sessions.
Unit Agentification starts from R175,000 per business unit (audit, build and deploy). A 12-Month Rollout starts from R60,000 a month, the Full Ecosystem (all six units) from R720,000, and AI Maintenance from R10,000 a month. Pricing is tiered by company size.
All six: HR; Finance; Sales & Marketing; Operations & Admin; Ethics, Risk & Governance; and Product, Production & Innovation.
Governed by design. Every agent is on an inventory with an owner, purpose, data access, approval gate and risk class. Humans stay in the loop on anything touching money, customers, hiring, legal or external communications. Data access is least-privilege, we don’t train on client data, and every action-taking agent ships with logging, monitoring and a kill-switch.
Gartner predicts more than 40% of agentic AI projects will be cancelled by the end of 2027, mostly the ones launched broad, ungoverned and unmeasured. Starting with one unit lets you prove the return before you scale.
All prices are in South African rand. 10gen is VAT registered and issues a full tax invoice. You can pay by EFT or by card at checkout.
Yes. We’ll sign an NDA on request before we see your data or workflows.
Training spend may be claimable as skills development spend under B-BBEE. Please confirm with your B-BBEE verification agent.
We’re proud partners of Google (Google Partner), Anthropic (Claude Partner Network), Meta (Meta Business Partner) and LinkedIn (Certified Marketing Partner).
Yes. Through the 10gen × KZN Top Business strategic alliance, member pricing for From Starter To Smarter is applied automatically at checkout.
WhatsApp or call Terry on 084 555 0005, email terry@10genai.com, or book a call.
Our view: AI shouldn’t replace experience, it should multiply it. The pattern that works is that the human owns the first mile (the right problem, the ethical boundary), the machine handles the heavy middle (processing, drafting, reconciling), and the human returns for the last mile (judgement, context, the handshake). The roles that change most are the repetitive ones, which is why we measure hours handed back to people.
MIT’s 2025 research found that 95% of corporate generative-AI pilots showed no measurable P&L return. The usual causes are bolting AI onto old workflows instead of redesigning the work, starting too broad, and never measuring a baseline. We start with one workflow, time it, and measure the change.
A chatbot answers when you ask. An agent is given a goal, tools and permissions, and carries out a multi-step job, such as reading a meeting recording, writing the minutes, assigning actions and drafting the follow-up email. Because agents can act, they need clear limits, human sign-off where it matters, and an off-switch.
Pick one or two, not eleven. ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Copilot are all capable; the best choice is usually the one that fits the systems your business already runs on. Use business or enterprise accounts, not personal free ones.
It depends on the account. Business and enterprise plans from the major providers generally don’t use your data to train their models by default, while free personal accounts may, depending on settings. Always check the provider’s terms, set clear rules on what data may and may never go in, and keep access limited to the people who need it.
POPIA applies whenever an AI tool processes personal information. You need a lawful reason to process it, appropriate security safeguards, and care with transfers of personal information outside South Africa. Section 71 also restricts decisions that significantly affect people when they’re made solely by automated processing, which is why we keep a human in the loop. This is general information, not legal advice.
Not a dedicated one. Government published a draft National AI Policy for public comment in April 2026 and withdrew it later that month. Existing laws such as POPIA and the Consumer Protection Act, plus sector regulations, already apply to how businesses use AI.
AI tools can produce confident answers that are simply wrong, including invented facts, figures or sources. The fix is process, not hope: ground the AI in your own documents, ask for sources, and have a named person review anything that goes to a customer, a regulator or the board.
Baseline first. Time the workflow as it runs today, then log the time saved after AI. Value it at a sensible hourly rate (our programme board uses R1,000 an hour), and track cost and errors cut, revenue grown and actual adoption. If you can’t show the number, you can’t claim the return.
From Starter To Smarter targets 15 minutes back per person per day in week one, rising to one to two hours by Day 28. A Micro App goes live in 4–6 weeks. Unit-level agentic builds are measured against the AI Audit baseline.
No. The programme needs no coding, and on builds the 10gen team does the technical work. We’ll involve your IT people where systems, access or security need sign-off.
Start small and visible. Pair a digital native with an experienced leader on each initiative: the native drives the tool, and the veteran interrogates the answer. Show the hours handed back on a board everyone can see. Adoption grows when people see AI taking the grind off their desk, not their job.
Yes. More buyers now ask AI assistants instead of only searching Google. Generative engine optimisation (GEO) helps your expertise show up in those AI answers as well as in search results. Our delivery team includes a dedicated AI & Generative Engine Optimisation expert.
Relationship-led, not ad-led. Message Terry directly and you’ll get a straight answer.