From Stalled to Stellar
PayStream AI
Ding Total Advantage Framework™ Journey
Phase 1: Meritocratic Triage
3 weeks
FIX verdict with clear remediation roadmap
Phase 2: Advantage Validation
2 weeks
PoC demonstrated 73% cost reduction potential
Phase 3: Total Acceleration
6 weeks
Live system processing 2M+ transactions, Series A secured
The Framework Journey
Phase 1: Meritocratic Triage
Meritocratic Triage uncovered data preprocessing flaws and over-engineering
Outcome: FIX verdict with clear remediation roadmap
Phase 2: Advantage Validation
Advantage Validation proved 10x cost efficiency with simplified architecture
Outcome: PoC demonstrated 73% cost reduction potential
Phase 3: Total Acceleration
Total Acceleration delivered production-grade system with competitive moat
Outcome: Live system processing 2M+ transactions, Series A secured
The Challenge
PayStream's AI-powered fraud detection system was burning $40K/month in cloud costs while generating excessive false positives. After 18 months of development, the system was still in "perpetual beta" with no clear path to production. The founding team was considering shutting down.
Triage Analysis
Scorecard Progress
Key Findings
- Data preprocessing pipeline introducing systematic bias
- Over-engineered microservices architecture causing latency issues
- Model architecture fundamentally sound but poorly tuned
- Team capabilities strong but misdirected
Critical Actions
- Rebuild data preprocessing with proper validation
- Consolidate to simpler monolithic architecture
- Implement modern RAG-based approach for context
- Optimize inference pipeline for cost efficiency
The Solution
Our Deep Dive Triage revealed critical issues: the model architecture was fundamentally sound, but data preprocessing was flawed and the inference pipeline was massively over-engineered. We provided a detailed Fix roadmap focusing on data quality improvements and infrastructure simplification. Post-triage acceleration included LLM reengineering using modern RAG techniques and cost-optimized deployment.
The Results
- 73% reduction in cloud infrastructure costs
- 89% decrease in false positive rates
- Production deployment achieved in 6 weeks
- Series A funding secured at $12M valuation
- Processing 2M+ transactions monthly
"Ding Ventures saved our company. Their triage was brutally honest—they told us exactly what was broken and gave us a clear path to fix it. Six weeks later, we were in production. Three months after that, we closed our Series A."
Marcus Chen
CEO, PayStream AI