SBDC.AI™

Overview

Built from zero. Now serving advisors statewide.

SBDC.AI is a purpose-built AI platform for small business development center advisors across California. It combines institutional knowledge, AI intelligence, and advisor workflows into one system.

The project required everything: naming, brand identity, web platform design, AI integration architecture, prompt engineering, and a content strategy that could onboard hundreds of advisors who had never touched AI tooling.

The Problem

Advisors drowning in process. AI sitting unused.

SBDC advisors spend 60% of their time on documentation, session prep, and administrative tasks. Meanwhile, AI tools exist but feel foreign, unreliable, and disconnected from the advising workflow.

The gap wasn't technology. It was trust. Advisors needed a system that felt purpose-built for their work, not a generic chatbot with a new skin.

The Approach

Design the trust first. Build the tool around it.

We started with the advisor experience, not the technology. What does an advisor actually do in a day? What are they afraid of getting wrong? What would make them open this tool instead of a spreadsheet?

The brand was built to feel institutional, not startup. The interface was designed to look like a professional tool, not a toy. Every prompt, every workflow, every piece of copy was written by people who understand advising, not engineers guessing.