Nominated as Business Innovator: a letter I opened standing up

Some letters you open standing up. This week one of them arrived at our office in Augsburg, from the German Innovation Institute (Deutsches Innovationsinstitut, diind). It said, in big letters: Ihr Unternehmen ist nominiert als Business Innovator. Your company is nominated as a Business Innovator.

I read it twice. Then I sent a photo to my family. Then I read it again.

What it's for

The diind, together with UNTERNEHMER magazine, nominated my company, Dimitriou eCommerce Web Services, for the work behind askTheodor, the desktop app we launched in July. The recognition is meant for companies that make new technology tangible and useful for others.

In short, the letter says that with askTheodor we give small businesses a fully local AI workforce: specialists from dozens of professions, working directly on their own computer. Reading that sentence from someone outside our little team felt strange in the best way. That is exactly what I set out to build.

Why it means so much to me

askTheodor didn't start as an app. It started in 2024 as a web chat with a handful of AI agents, and it went through more versions than I like to admit before it became what it is today: AI workers for sales, ops, research and content that run on your machine, where agents prepare and humans approve. I wrote the whole story when it launched, in askTheodor is live.

For most of that road it was me, a laptop, and every hour I could find. No investors, no big team, no marketing budget. When you build like that, you rarely hear from the outside world that it matters. Then a letter like this arrives.

I always wanted AI to help not only the big corporations, but the carpenter, the medical practice, the three-person office. Seeing that idea recognised in Germany, by people who look at innovation for a living, makes me genuinely happy, and grateful.

Staying honest about it

A nomination is not an award yet, and I'll treat it that way: as motivation, not as a finish line. When the result is known, I'll share it here. Win or not, one thing is already certain: askTheodor and the rest of our tools will keep getting better, because that work happens every day regardless of any badge.

Thank you

To everyone who tried askTheodor in the first weeks, sent feedback, reported bugs and told a friend: this nomination is yours too. To my family, who lived with this project as much as I did: thank you for your patience. And to you, reading this: thank you for following along.

The official announcement from my company is here. If you're curious what the fuss is about, askTheodor has a free 7-day trial, no card needed, and the documentation shows what it can do. The technical side is in my portfolio.