Guest Blog: From Jeff Miller, CEO of Australian Drilling Industry Association (ADIA)
We were just having a conversation with Rob, Betty’s CEO, and we expressed something about Betty… Betty isn’t like any other product we’ve ever invested in. It’s the only product we know that appreciates in value.
Most things we buy lose value over time. Software needs constant updates, equipment wears out, vehicles depreciate the minute you drive them off the lot. Betty is different. Every day, she gets smarter, more capable, and more valuable, without costing us more money.
As I said to Rob, “It’s like buying an MG and ending up with a Tesla without paying more.”
(Other references for those not well versed in electric vehicles: It’s like buying a purse from Target and watching it turn into a Louis Vuitton or it's as if you bought a ham-and-cheese sandwich and ended up with a five-star tasting menu)
That’s not just clever marketing, it’s really what’s happening. We locked in our price months ago, but the assistant we’re using today is already multiple times more powerful than the version we started with.
Rob put it another way: “Betty is as stupid as she’s ever gonna be today.” In other words, this is her baseline. Tomorrow she’ll be smarter. Next month she’ll be even more capable.
Betty’s growth isn’t random; it comes from the way she’s built. She learns from our association’s own proprietary content: standards, manuals, training programs, safety requirements, HR policies, and more. The more relevant knowledge we feed her, the better she becomes at serving our members and our staff.
And just as important, we get to control what our Betty is trained on. When we have something new, we can train her on that and if something is no longer best practice, we can remove it. Plus, Betty only responds with the information that she has, so if you ask her something completely outside of her knowledge, she tells you she can’t answer it. Unlike public AI tools, we’re not risking our intellectual property (IP) or letting members get answers from questionable sources. This is our environment, trained by us, for us.
For our members, this is game-changing. Betty already knows the ins and outs of our drilling manual which is thousands of pages of technical requirements. Instead of flipping through binders or phoning someone on staff, members can ask Betty and get the exact chapter they need. And this is just the start.
We’re planning to roll out new Betty features every few months, like study guide helpers for licensing exams, safety tools, HR support, and more. Each one adds new value to membership, without extra cost. Hence the whole appreciating asset thing!
Most of what we buy, like tools and other software depreciate the longer we use it. Betty is the rare exception. She’s an appreciating asset on the market for associations right now. Every day, every week, every month, she gets better at delivering value to our members, while our cost stays fixed.
That’s why we’re convinced: investing in Betty wasn’t just a good decision, it was the smartest one we’ve made.