By role: Founders and CEOs
AI and automation for founders who are still the system.
If every answer runs through you, the business is capped at your hours. We put the routine work into systems your team owns, so you can spend the week on what only you can do.
- First workflow live
- Founder morning brief, usually inside the first sprint
- Usually owned by
- Founders and CEOs of growing businesses
- Built on
- n8n, Make, Airtable
- Judged on
- Questions routed to you and Founder hours on admin
In short
For a founder, AI automation means moving the routine decisions and follow-ups that run through you into systems the team can run: one record per customer and order, automatic status, and a daily summary instead of a stream of questions. SBD starts with a $500 audit, credited to a fixed-price build from $2,500.
Who this is for
Who you work with to get this done.
- Founders and CEOs of growing businesses
- Owner-managers of family businesses
- Second-generation owners modernising how things run
- Founders preparing to hire an operations lead
Is this you?
If three of these sound like your week, this page is about your week.
- Your team asks you before they ask the system
- You have paid for AI tools nobody uses
- Taking a week off means checking messages daily
- Hiring is the only way you have added capacity
- You hear about problems from customers first
What it costs today
Where founders and CEOs loses the hours.
You are the integration layer
Sales, operations and finance each ask you, because you are the only one who knows how the pieces fit.
You tried AI and it did not stick
A few subscriptions, a chatbot, a demo that impressed. None of it changed how the work is done on a Tuesday.
Hiring is the only lever you have used
Each new hire adds capacity and another person copying data between tools, so headcount grows faster than revenue.
You find out about problems late
A missed follow-up or a late order reaches you when the customer complains, not when it happens.
For founders
Take a week off without the business noticing.
Tell us the questions you answer every day. We will show you which ones a system could answer instead, and what it costs to build.
Book a founder call
By company size
Founders and CEOs at 10 people, and at 1,000.
- 1 to 10
You do the sales, the delivery and the admin, and the admin wins.
- 11 to 50
The team is capable, but every question still routes through you.
- 51 to 200
You have managers now, and still find out about problems from customers.
What we build
What we build for founders and CEOs teams.
- 01
The business out of your head
Your processes mapped and built into one system of record, so the team can answer questions without asking you.
- 02
Follow-ups that happen on their own
Leads answered, quotes chased and customers updated from events in the system, with exceptions routed to a person.
- 03
A morning brief
One summary each day of what is late, what is at risk and what needs you, written from live data.
- 04
AI where it earns its place
Agents for reading documents, drafting replies and qualifying enquiries, each with a review step and a limit on what it may do.
The workflows
The founders and CEOs workflows, and what sets each one off.
- 01 Founder morning brief
When each morning
ThenLate work, risks and decisions needed, summarised from live data
- 02 Lead response
When an enquiry arrives
ThenEnriched, qualified and answered, hot leads routed to a person
- 03 Quote follow-up
When a quote is unanswered after a set time
ThenA follow-up sent, then a task raised for the owner
- 04 Customer status updates
When an order or job changes stage
ThenThe customer told, without anyone typing it
The numbers we move
How a founders and CEOs build is judged.
Every build has a number written into the blueprint. These are the ones founders and CEOs builds are measured by, and how we measure them.
| Metric | Before | After | How it is measured |
|---|---|---|---|
| Questions routed to you | Counted for a week in the audit | Tracked after go-live | Messages to the founder asking for status or information, per week |
| Founder hours on admin | Self-reported in the audit | Re-measured at review | Hours per week on follow-ups, copying and reporting |
| Response time to enquiries | Baseline from your inbox | Tracked per enquiry | Median time from enquiry to first reply |
| Problems found late | Raised by customers | Flagged by the system | Issues first seen in an alert rather than a complaint, per month |
Built on
The tools you already run, where we can.
Every tool we connect has its own page in the integrations directory.
Proof
Proof from builds like this.
- Customer story
Lightweight project management system
Per-person task sheets syncing to a live admin view for a five-person studio, so the owner saw status without asking anyone.
Read the story - Customer story
Lead enrichment and sales automation
Inbound leads enriched, scored and answered in under three minutes, with manual CRM entry down about 90% and a person in the loop.
Read the story - Customer story
Internal operations tool replacing SmartSuite
An internal tool that replaced a sprawl of tables with one shared system of record for a consulting firm.
Read the story
How it starts
An audit of the founders and CEOs work your team still does by hand.
One to two weeks. We map the workflows, put an hours-a-week figure on each, and give you a costed blueprint in order of payback. The audit is credited in full to the build.
- Week 1 to 2Audit. We sit with the people who do the work and map it.
- Week 3Blueprint. Fixed scope, fixed price, the first build chosen by payback.
- Week 4 onBuild in two-week sprints, working software every second Friday.
- After go-liveSixty days of hypercare, then a care plan or run it yourself.
What this does not do
So the scope is clear before the call.
- Building your product. We build the operations around it.
- A one-off chatbot with nothing behind it.
- Businesses without a repeatable process yet. Write it down first, then automate it.
Terms, defined
Founders and CEOs terms, in plain English.
- System of record
- The one place a fact about a customer, order or job lives, which every other tool reads from.
- Agent
- An AI step that reads, decides within set limits and acts, with a person reviewing anything outside them.
- Automation Audit
- SBD's fixed-price review of how work is done, with findings ranked and each fix priced.
Questions
What people ask about founders and CEOs automation.
I do not have time for a long project. How much of my time does this take?
A few hours in the audit, mostly one conversation about how the business runs, then short reviews at the end of each two-week sprint. We work with your team for the detail.
Should I hire an operations person instead?
Often you need both. Automation removes the copying and chasing, so the person you hire spends their time on judgement rather than data entry.
What if we change direction in six months?
Everything is built in tools you own and documented, so it can be changed by us, by your team or by another builder.
What does it cost?
The audit is $500, credited to the build. Builds start at $2,500 at a fixed price, most are $5,000 to $15,000, and care plans start at $50 a month.
Reading
- Strategy
We tried AI and nothing stuck
The sentence we hear on most first calls is rarely about the AI. Four reasons small companies abandon tools, and the change that makes the next try stick.
- Strategy
Automation vs AI systems: what moves the number
Stacking task automations stalls at around twenty. The difference between a task and a system, the five layers that hold it up, and what to rebuild first.
- Checklist
The 2026 AI readiness checklist
Ten questions across data, process, tools, team and strategy. Score your business before you spend on AI, and see whether to build now or fix the foundations.
Related
- Function
Leadership
The numbers you run the company on, pulled from the systems that hold them, every morning, with a note on what changed.
- Function
Operations
The order moves through the business without anyone re-typing it, and everyone who needs to know, knows.
- Industry
Professional services
Intake and engagement letters that run themselves, client documents collected without chasing, deadlines that cannot slip, and billing that follows the work.
- Role
COOs and heads of operations
You are measured on throughput, cost and the things that did not go wrong. We find where the hours go, fix the worst of it at a fixed price, and hand you something you can govern.
- Role
Heads of sales and RevOps
You are measured on pipeline, conversion and forecast accuracy, and all three depend on a CRM nobody wants to update. We make the CRM update itself and put the follow-ups on rails.
By role: COOs and heads of operations, CFOs and finance directors, Heads of sales and RevOps, Heads of customer support, CIOs and IT leads, HR and people leads, Marketing leads
Founders and CEOs
Get the founders and CEOs hours back.
Bring the one founders and CEOs workflow your team still runs by hand. You leave the call with a yes or no on fit and the first thing we would build.
Book the call