I do agree with you that a different phase would have been better and also the author might have been mixing metaphors like you alluded to ("get in on the ground floor/level" or "build it from the ground up").

I didn't read the complete article so I missed the phrase originally, it might have given me a slight pause but I would understand the meaning.

My apologies too for the nitpicking, I enjoy language and yes, interesting were on an LLM thread discussing this.