What we do · Advise
A senior technology lead, one to three days a week
A fractional AI and automation lead for your leadership team: what to build, what to buy, what to stop, and in what order. Without hiring a full-time head of AI.
- Price
- From $8,000/month (1 day/week) · $15,000 to $18,000 (2 days) · $25,000 to $30,000 (3+ days)
- Time
- Monthly, minimum three months
- For
- Founders and COOs making technology decisions without anyone senior to check them.
- You own
- The inventory, roadmap and decision log
In short
Advise gives a company without a technology leader a fractional AI lead or CTO. One to three days a week, they own tool selection, process audits, build-or-buy decisions, vendor management and the roadmap. Priced from $8,000 a month for one day a week, with 2-day and 3-day tiers. Build work is quoted separately, so you always know what is advice and what is delivery.
Is this you?
If three of these sound like your week, AI advice is the place to start.
- The board is asking for an AI plan and nobody owns it
- Teams are buying AI tools without a shared view
- A pilot ran and nobody can say what it returned
- You need someone to review vendor proposals
- You want a roadmap your own team can execute
What this is not
So the scope is clear before the call.
- Slideware. Every recommendation comes with an owner, a number and a first step.
- Selling you our own build. If buying is better, we say so.
Most often for
What we have built
Advise in practice.
- Strategy
Read the 95% figure properly
What the MIT study measured, and what the 5% did differently.
Read the post - Strategy
Why AI did not stick, and the retry
The four reasons tools get abandoned, and what fixes each.
Read the post - Real estate
An agent fleet scoped with rules first
Which actions agents may take alone, which need a person, and a kill switch.
Read the story
Advise
An AI plan with owners and numbers.
Bring the list of AI ideas your team has. We will tell you which three are worth doing first, and which to drop.
Bring your list
How it runs
Advise, step by step.
- 1Month 1
Systems inventory and roadmap. Every tool, contract and workaround listed with a keep, fix or replace decision.
- 2Ongoing
Weekly working session with the founder or COO. Decisions written down with their reasons. Vendors and builds managed on your behalf.
- 3Quarterly
Roadmap review against the business plan. What to automate next, what to stop paying for.
What you get
- A systems inventory and roadmap
- Written decisions with reasons
- Vendor and build oversight
- A quarterly review
How we know it is done
- Every technology decision in the period has a written record
- The roadmap is current and agreed each quarter
What you own
- The inventory, roadmap and decision log
- The vendor relationships
- The right to end at any month end after the minimum
growth in fractional executive postings in 2025, 97% of them from small and mid-size businesses
Source: Lightcast, 2025Built on
The tools you already run, where we can.
Proof
Customer stories.
“A fractional lead is a sounding board and a quality bar. Not a bench of engineers. We say so up front.”
How it starts
Every project starts with an audit.
One to two weeks with the people who do the work. A costed blueprint in order of payback. The $500 is credited in full to the build.
- Audit1 to 2 weeks. $500, credited to your build.
- BlueprintIncluded in the audit’s second week. Included with the Audit; quoted separately for multi-phase programmes.
- Build2 to 8 weeks. From $2,500 one-time; most builds $5,000 to $15,000.
- Run60 days of hypercare, then monthly. Hypercare included; care plans from $1,000/month.
Questions
What people ask about AI advice.
Is build work included?
No, and we say so plainly. Advisory covers decisions, oversight and the roadmap. Anything that needs building is scoped and quoted as a fixed-price sprint, which you can give to us or to anyone.
What is the minimum term?
Three months. After that, any month end.
Can the lead sit in our leadership meetings?
Yes. That is usually where the value is.
Which decisions does the lead own?
Tool selection, vendor choice, build-or-buy, data and security standards, and the order of the roadmap. Hiring and budget stay with you; the lead advises and documents the reasons.
How and when do we pay?
Fixed-price work is invoiced in milestones: a deposit at kick-off, the balance at acceptance. Care plans are monthly in advance and cancel at any month end. Platform and model costs pass through at cost and are itemised.
Reading
- Strategy
The 95% figure, read properly
MIT says 95% of generative AI pilots show no profit impact. The study was 52 interviews, 153 survey responses and 300 public deployments. What it measured, what it did not, what the other 5% did, and why we quote it anyway.
- Strategy
We tried AI and nothing stuck
The sentence we hear on most first calls. It is almost never about the AI. The four reasons tools get abandoned in small companies, how to tell which one you have, and the one change that makes the next attempt stick.
Also what we do
- What we do
Automate
Teams re-typing data between tools, chasing status by hand, or waiting a day for a report.
- What we do
Modernise
Companies running a $5M to $100M operation on spreadsheets, a legacy ERP or a tool nobody dares change.
- What we do
Extend
Teams that already run a platform but are out of capacity, or need a skill they do not have in-house.
- What we do
Harden
Founders who shipped something real with an AI builder and need it to survive real customers, investors or an audit.
Related: Audit, Extend, How we work
Advise
Talk to the people who would build it.
Thirty minutes. Bring the work your team still does by hand. You leave with a yes or no on fit and the first thing we would build.
Book the call