# Sage.is AI — The Elevator Pitch

## For Alex & Izzy | Prepared by Dorie Clark Method Interview

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## The 45-Second Hook (The Barbecue)

> We're both educators. I taught high school IB music for the past 20 years. Alex was Etsy's 5th employe and since having our son, has also focused on education. These days we are building for the future. I've stepped away from full time teaching to work on our project.
>
> You know ChatGPT or Google's AI?
>
>Using them is a like buying a factory-made cake from the grocery store. It's fine. It works. But you don't get to pick the ingredients, you can't change the recipe, and you don't really know what's in it.
>
> We built something different. You know cockeyed cake? The one your grandmother made — no eggs, no butter, no fancy equipment, you mix it right in the pan? That's what our AI Sage.is. A free tool that lets you make your own AIs from scratch. You pick the ingredients. You write the recipe. You bake it in your own oven. And nothing ever needs to leave your kitchen.
>
> It's as easy as cake. Not ***π***.

**That's the fork.** Stop here if eyes are bright. If they lean in, pick it up and choose a slice:

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## The 2-Minute Branch (Pick Your Audience)

### For Parents & Educators

> Right now, students are using ChatGPT to write essays, and teachers have no idea what's happening. They're guessing. Was this the student's work? Did AI do it? How much? It's a black box.
>
> With Sage.is AI, the school runs its own AI — on their own computers, behind their own walls. Teachers can see *how* students are engaging with AI. Not to police them but to *teach* them. To say, "I see you asked the AI to write this paragraph for you. What if instead you asked it to help you brainstorm?" That's the difference between a consumer mindset and a maker mindset.
>
> We think AI in education is here to stay. The question is whether kids learn to use it like a crutch or like a power tool.

**If they're hooked:** "A teacher friend of Izzy's actually modeled an AI teaching assistant after herself — gave it her voice, her style, even made it a little more direct than she normally is. Took about five minutes. She didn't change the model. She changed a few words in the recipe. That's what we mean by making it yours."

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### For Business & Teams

> Most companies are sending their internal data ( strategy docs, client info, financials) all  through someone else's AI servers. They don't think about it because it feels like just another search bar.
>
> With Sage.is AI, you can run the whole thing yourself. Your data never has to leave the building. And you can create AI workers — trained on your documents, your processes, your way of doing things. Need an AI assistant that writes proposals in your brand voice? Done. One that answers HR questions from your actual policy handbook? Done.
>
> It's free. If you need help setting it up, that's where we come in.

**If they're hooked:** "Alex's father loves a model called DeepSeek but hated how long-winded it was. In about two minutes, Alex walked him through building a custom version with clear instructions to keep things short. Same AI brain, different recipe. Now it works exactly the way his dad thinks. That's what we do — for entire organizations."

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### For the Skeptic ("I tried AI, it wasn't helpful")

> That's actually the whole point of what we're building. ChatGPT is one company's idea of what AI should be. It's like buying cake from a big box grocery store — same cake everywhere, and you can't ask them to change the recipe.
>
> What if you could bake it yourself? Pick a different AI model — there are hundreds of them, and some are genuinely faster, cheaper, and some even better at different things. Then tell it exactly how you want it to behave. Keep it brief. Be more creative. Focus on this topic. Forget about that one.
>
> That's what Sage.is. You stop being a customer and start baking.

**If they push back — "but I'm not technical":** "That's the whole point. Cockeyed cake doesn't need eggs, butter, or a stand mixer. We built Sage.is the same way — no fancy equipment, no engineering degree. If you can fill out a form, you can build your own AI."

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## The 5-Minute Deep Dive (They Sat Down)

Use when someone says: *"Okay wait, tell me more."*

### Open with the hook (30 seconds above)

### Then: Why this matters now

> Here's what most people don't realize. The AI you use for free or are paying for (ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot) every conversation you have with it gets sent to their servers. They use it to improve their products. That's the deal. It's the social media model all over again: you're the product, not the real client.
>
> There's another way. In the last two years, AI models have gotten good enough and small enough to run on regular computers.
>
> Not a supercomputer. A laptop. A small office server. The technology is there. What was missing was the interface: the thing that makes it usable for normal people, not just engineers.
>
> That's what we built.

### Then: What Sage.is actually

> Sage.is AI-UI is free. You download and install it. You pick which AI models you want, there are hundreds, many of them as good or better than ChatGPT for specific tasks. Then you get a clean, simple interface where you can:
>
> - **Chat** with any AI model, switch between them, compare answers
> - **Build agents** — custom AIs with specific personalities, knowledge, and instructions
> - **Feed it your documents** — PDFs, websites, handbooks — and it answers questions from *your* information, not the internet's (unless you want it to search online)
> - **Collaborate** — multiple people in the same workspace, with shared AI agents and shared knowledge
>
> Everything runs on your hardware. Nothing leaves your computer unless you make that choice. And like cockeyed cake, our recipe is public — anyone can see exactly how it works. There's no secrets and no hidden ingredients.

### Then: Branch by audience (use the 2-minute sections above)

### Close with the ask

> **For personal use:** It's free. Go to sage.is, download it, and you'll be up and running in ten minutes if you are ok with using the command line. We're going to be releasing a friendlier install very soon.
>
> **For schools or organizations:** Same thing: it's free to use. If you want help setting it up, training your team, or building custom AI for your workflow, that's what we do. Reach out at sage.is and we'll walk you through it.

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## Quick Reference Card

### Words to USE
- Cake, bake, recipe, ingredients, kitchen, homemade
- "Easy as cake, not ***π***"
- Your data stays yours
- Make your own AI
- Free (explain open source only if asked)
- Runs on your computer / your school's server
- Maker mindset
- "As private as you choose"

### Words to AVOID
- Open source (use "free" and "the recipe is public" instead — explain the term only if asked)
- Framework, toolkit, platform (use "tool" or just "it")
- RAG, inference, LLM, model orchestration
- On-premise / on-prem (use "on your own computer")
- Deploy (use "set up" or "install")
- Agentic workflows (use "AI workers" or "AI assistants you design")

### The Cocktail Party Sentence
The one line someone repeats to a friend the next day:

> "They built this free thing where you can make your own AI that runs on your computer — like baking your own cake instead of buying one from the store. They say their Sage.is as easy as cake, not **π**."

### Objection Responses

| They say | You say |
|---|---|
| "I tried AI, it wasn't helpful" | "That's exactly why we built this — so you can make one that actually is." |
| "Why not just use ChatGPT?" | "You can. But everything you type goes to their servers. And you get their AI, not yours." |
| "I'm not technical" | "You don't need to be. Cockeyed cake doesn't need eggs or butter — our tool doesn't need an engineering degree." |
| "Is this safe?" | "Safer than the alternative. Your data never leaves your building." |
| "Is this legal for schools?" | "It's the most compliant option because student data never needs to touch a third-party server." |
| "What's open source?" | "The recipe is public. Anyone can see exactly how it works. No secrets, no hidden ingredients." |
| "Sounds too good to be free" | "Cockeyed cake was invented because people couldn't afford eggs and butter. Sometimes the best things come from making with what you have. We were already making it and we're sharing it with everyone." |

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## The Origin Story (Use When It Feels Right)

> You know how both of our grandmothers taught us to make cockeyed cake? No eggs, no butter, no fancy equipment, just simple ingredients mixed right into the pan. We actually discovered that on our first date.
>
> Sage.is started from the same place. We didn't think you should need a massive budget or a team of engineers to have AI that works for you. So we built a cockeyed cake version of AI. Simple ingredients. Your kitchen. A recipe anyone can follow and anyone can change.

*Use this when the conversation is warm and personal — not in a cold pitch. It earns trust because it's true.*

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## The Cake Is the Campaign

The cockeyed cake isn't just a metaphor. It's a **brand activation** you can bring to every event, meeting, and demo.

### The Recipe Card

Print the cockeyed cake recipe on a card. Front: the recipe. Back: the Sage.is URL and tagline.

> **Cockeyed Cake**
> No eggs. No butter. No fancy equipment. Mix it right in the pan.
>
> **Sage.is AI-UI**
> No subscription. No data harvesting. No engineering degree. Set it up in your own kitchen (or wherever you want).
>
> *The recipe is always public. — sage.is*

Hand these out everywhere. People keep recipe cards. They pin them on fridges. They share them with friends. That card is working for you for years.

### Bake It at Events

At booths, demos, workshops, and meetups — bake the cake. Serve it while you demo the platform. Nobody forgets the booth that fed them, and the cake *is* the pitch:

> "This cake has no eggs, no butter, and no fancy equipment. Our AI has no subscription, no data harvesting, and no engineering degree required. Same philosophy."

At school demos: bake it *with* the audience. A classroom of students mixing cockeyed cake while learning to build their first AI agent? That's a workshop people talk about.

### It's Vegan

The cake is naturally vegan — not a special dietary version, not a compromise. The *default* works for everyone. Just like the software:

- Free by default, not freemium
- Private by default, not as an add-on
- Inclusive by design, not by accommodation

When someone at an event says "oh, is there a vegan option?" you say: **"Everything here is. The cake and the software."**

### Parallel Language

Every property of the cake maps to the product. Use these naturally:

| The Cake | The Software |
|---|---|
| No eggs, no butter | No subscription, no vendor lock-in |
| No fancy equipment | No engineering team required |
| Mix it right in the pan | Set it up on your own computer |
| The recipe is public | The code is open source |
| Naturally vegan | Inclusive by default |
| Depression-era ingenuity | Built for teams that can't afford enterprise AI, but need **it**|
| Grandma's recipe, passed down freely | Community-built, shared freely |
| You can change the recipe | You can customize everything |
| Baked in your kitchen | Runs on your infrastructure |

### The Long Game

This isn't a one-time gimmick. This is an identity:

- **Conference booths:** "Come get cockeyed cake and meet your new AI."
- **Workshop series:** "Bake & Build" — make the cake, then make an agent.
- **Social media:** Recipe videos that pivot to Sage.is demos. Same kitchen. Same ingredients. Same philosophy.
- **Merch:** Aprons, recipe cards, cake pans with the Sage.is logo. Practical, memorable, shareable.
- **First-time user experience:** When someone installs Sage.is for the first time, the welcome message could reference the recipe. *"Welcome to your kitchen."*

The cake gives you something almost no open-source project has: **a physical, sensory, emotional anchor** that people associate with your brand. Every time they smell cockeyed cake, they think of you.

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## Speaker Notes

### For Alex
The cockeyed cake metaphor is yours — and that matters. You didn't borrow an analogy from a marketing book. You reached into your own family, your own kitchen, your first date. That's why it lands. You naturally go deep and technical, and that's your superpower in a room full of developers or IT leads. But for this pitch, your job is to *hold back.* Lead with the cake. Trust it. You can always go deeper — but you can never un-lose someone who glazed over in the first fifteen seconds. Your dad's DeepSeek story is your second weapon. It's concrete, it's funny, and it proves the point without any jargon.

### For Izzy
Your instinct for emotional truth is what makes this pitch stick. The teacher story is yours — tell it with the details (she thought she was too much of a pushover, the AI helped her find the voice she wished she had). For the education audience, your credibility as someone who left music teaching *because this mattered that much* is powerful. Don't hide that transition — it's proof of conviction. And when someone asks why you left teaching: "I didn't leave teaching. I'm making sure the next generation of teachers has the right tools — not the store-bought ones." You and Alex share the cockeyed cake — it's both of your grandmothers, both of your histories. When you tell it, it's a love story and a mission statement at the same time.

### Together
When you're both present, let Alex open with the cake metaphor — it's his, and the conviction shows. Izzy picks up the emotional thread: the education angle, the maker mindset, what's at stake for kids. Then Alex brings the engine: here's what it actually does, here's how fast it works. The origin story — both grandmothers, first date, cockeyed cake — that's your closer when the moment calls for it. It's the most human thing in this pitch, and it makes you unforgettable.

Don't rehearse a script. Rehearse the *handoff points.*

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*Prepared via strategic interview — Dorie Clark Method*
*For Sage.is AI | sage.is*
