AI Strategy

Someone to think it through with.

Most companies that come to us know what they want built and need the capacity. Some want a straight answer first: whether an idea is worth the money, and what building it would really take.

What we’re after

Your company, better at AI than it was.

Some of the companies we work with have a CTO or a technical lead, and we work alongside them, bringing extra capacity, a second opinion, and someone to think a hard call through with. Some don’t have anyone in that seat yet and want us to fill it. Both arrangements are completely normal, and the work looks much the same either way.

What we’re actually interested in is the same in both cases: your company getting genuinely better at AI strategy and implementation. More of what you need built actually getting built. Your people clearer about what’s worth doing and more confident when a vendor tells them something.

We’ll fit whatever shape you already have. Tell us what’s there and we’ll tell you where we’d be useful.

Three ways this usually goes

Pick the one that matches your question.

Assessment A set price for a set piece of work, ending in a decision. Over about four weeks we look at how you actually operate, what data you have, and what systems you run. You get a short list of what’s worth doing, roughly what each would cost, what it would return, and what has to be true for those returns to hold. The list includes the ideas we think you should drop and the reasons why, which is usually the part people find most useful.

Second opinion One specific question, with a deadline behind it. Is this vendor’s proposal any good. Should we build this or buy it. Is the technology sound at the company we’re about to acquire. Is the project we’re halfway through going to work. Usually a week or two, sometimes a single working session.

Ongoing A senior technical voice, month to month. What people usually mean by a fractional CTO. Someone who sits in on the decisions that matter, reads what vendors send you, keeps the plan consistent, and can talk to your board without needing a translator. The arrangement works best next to a build lane, where the advice and the building sit together.

How the two fit together

Strategy work is its own engagement, priced on its own.

A build lane already carries judgment about how to build something properly: what to use, what to avoid, where a shortcut will cost you in two years. That experience is part of what a lane is for. Strategy work answers a different question, about what your company should be doing in the first place, and the two are billed separately because they are genuinely different jobs.

Plenty of companies run both at once, and that is usually the strongest arrangement. The same person who sat in the room while you decided what was worth doing is the person steering the lane that builds it, so nothing gets lost between the deciding and the building.

Plenty of companies also run just one. If you already know what you want built, go straight to a build lane. If you want to settle a direction before spending money on construction, start here.

How build lanes work

What it costs

Quoted after a conversation.

A build lane carries one published price because a lane is a fixed amount of capacity.

An assessment for a fifteen-person company and an assessment for a company with four sites and a system from 1998 are not the same job. Publishing one price for both would mean overcharging the smaller company to cover the larger one.

So assessments and second opinions are quoted as a set price, agreed in writing before any work starts. The ongoing arrangement is a flat monthly fee, also agreed up front. Neither one is billed by the hour, and neither one counts meetings.

We used to sell this work in tiers of advisory hours per month. Those tiers turned every conversation into a discussion about attendance rather than about whether your decisions were getting better, and nobody could tell whether the engagement was working, including us.

Next step

Tell us three things you wish you could build.

We’ll tell you which one we’d build first, and roughly how long it would take. Twenty minutes, no slideshow.

Start a lane Starts at $5,000/month · Cancel anytime