Consulting
How a large, heavily regulated organization adopts artificial intelligence without it failing. I work on that problem at scale, and I take on a small number of outside engagements applying it. Fixed scope, fixed price, from $2,900 to $14,000.
The problem I actually work on
Most organizations adopting artificial intelligence are not held back by the models. They are held back by everything around them: nobody can say what a correct answer looks like, the data is not shaped for it, the approval path was designed for software that behaves deterministically, and the first confidently wrong output destroys the credibility of the whole programme.
Those problems get harder the more regulated the organization is, because a wrong answer is not merely embarrassing, and because "can we try it" has to survive several people whose job is to say no. Most writing about adopting AI quietly assumes none of that applies.
What transfers between organizations is not an industry. It is the sequencing: what to do first, what to refuse to do, how to tell early whether something is working, and how to build a system that fails safely rather than plausibly.
I have written the whole argument down: how a regulated organization should sequence AI adoption. It is long and it is opinionated, and it is the fastest way for you to decide whether I would be useful to you. I would rather you read that than take a call, and it is deliberately the most substantial thing on this site.
Why the engagements are shaped the way they are
Every offer below is fixed scope and fixed price, and that is not a billing preference. Hourly billing means you carry the risk of me being slow, and you cannot know the total until it is done. Fixed means I carry that risk, and you know the number before anything starts.
Prices are on this page rather than behind a call, because you should be able to decide whether this is worth a conversation without having one first. I take on two or three engagements at a time, since this runs alongside a full-time role, so I would rather decline something than take it on and do it badly.
A working prototype in two weeks
The main way the above gets delivered. Rather than a report recommending what you might do, you get the smallest real version of it, built, so the decision is made against something that exists.
In two weeks I turn one idea into two concrete things.
A build-ready specification. A short, precise document describing exactly what the thing does, what counts as correct, and where the edges are. Clear enough that any developer, or an assistant, can build it without guessing.
A working prototype. Not a mockup and not slides. A real, running version of the core idea that you can click, test, and show to other people.
You end the two weeks knowing whether the idea works, what it should cost to build fully, and holding something real either way.
How it runs
- Days 1 to 3. I interview you to pin the idea down, then write the specification. You review and approve it. Nothing gets built until we agree what done means.
- Days 4 to 10. I build the prototype test-first, against the specification. You get one short check-in midway.
- Days 11 to 14. I hand over the prototype, the specification, and a plain recommendation on what to do next.
Your time cost: one kickoff conversation, one midpoint check-in, one handoff. That is it.
The price
Fixed at $9,000 to $14,000, quoted flat before we start. No hourly billing and no scope surprises, so you know the number on day zero. Half to begin, half on handoff.
Nothing about a quote expires, so there is no reason to decide quickly.
Other ways to work together
Fewer, larger, fixed-scope pieces of work, on purpose. Each one ends with something you keep.
A build-ready specification, no meetings
Send me the fuzzy idea. You get back a specification precise enough to build from: what it must do, what counts as correct, where the edges are. No calls, no discovery workshop, no slides.
Fixed price: $2,900. One idea, one specification, one revision, about a week. The cheapest way to find out whether an idea holds up, and plenty of people stop here because the specification was the hard part.
Product management coaching
Six one-to-one sessions for product managers and analysts moving into product leadership, plus support between sessions. We work on your actual roadmap and your actual decisions rather than a case study.
Deliverables: six sessions, asynchronous support throughout, and a written development plan you keep.
A part-time product lead
Some companies do not need a project. They need a senior product brain steering the effort a few hours a week: owning the roadmap, writing the specifications, and stopping the wrong things from being built.
Retainer: $4,000 to $6,000 per month, month to month, no lock-in. I take on two or three at a time, so availability is genuinely limited. For most people the fixed-scope work above is the better first step, and I will usually say so.
Who this is for, and who it is not
I would rather be specific than have you find out on a call. If the second list describes you, that is genuinely useful information for both of us, and there is a free version further down that you are welcome to regardless.
A good fit
- You have been meaning to build or automate one specific thing for months, and it has not happened.
- You can decide on the spend yourself, without assembling a committee.
- Your company is roughly ten to two hundred people.
- The problem involves information that starts unstructured, on paper, in photographs, in a spreadsheet held together by one person doing it manually.
- You are willing to work asynchronously, with occasional calls early or late in the day.
Not a fit, and I will say so early
- Anything in the financial sector. I keep my consulting and teaching work outside the financial sector, without exception. That includes banks, lenders, investment managers, brokerages, insurance, payments, financial technology, accounting and tax practices, and any project whose subject is markets, lending, trading, or investment. It is a line I hold rather than a judgment about the work, and I would rather say so here than after a call. If that is you, the written method is free and you are welcome to it.
- You want an hourly arrangement. Everything here is fixed scope on purpose. Hourly means you carry the risk of me being slow and cannot know the total until it is finished. Fixed means I carry that.
- You want an entire product built. A two-week sprint is one core idea, deliberately. If you have twelve, the useful first step is picking one, and I am happy to help with that part for free.
- You need someone available during business hours regularly. A kickoff call in the working day is arrangeable. A standing daytime commitment is not, and that is a real constraint rather than a preference.
If none of the above rules you out but you are still not sure, the thirty-minute conversation is the cheapest way to find out, and it costs nothing.
Why me
I build software by writing specifications precise enough that an assistant implements them without a single clarifying question, then I ship the result. The method is the whole pitch, so it is worth being concrete about what it actually catches.
On a recent engagement, the job was reading handwritten cards into a spreadsheet. Two things went wrong, and neither of them looked wrong.
A card reading 3/11 came back as 2024-03-11 with high confidence. The real year was 2026, and the invented date filed itself into a financial record without raising anything. Asking the model to be stricter made it worse: it then refused a perfectly legible date because it could not rule out the year 1926. The fix was structural rather than a better prompt. The model now transcribes literally and separate code does the interpreting.
Then, appending a row to a test spreadsheet preserved every chart and every format, exactly as hoped, and left the total formula stopping one row short. The data ran to row ten and the sum still ended at row nine. No error, no warning, and a total that under-reported by $12.40.
Both failures are the same failure. An assistant does not fail loudly, it fails plausibly, and a confident wrong answer goes straight into your spreadsheet and sits there. Both were caught because "how will we know it is right" had been written down before anything was built. That is what you are buying.
Everything I make is tested before it is called done, and you can try what I have built before deciding anything.
This is independent consulting, taken on in a personal capacity and entirely separate from any employment. Engagements run outside business hours, which is why the scope is fixed and the calendar commitment is small.
Tell me the idea
However rough. If I can see a clean version of "done" in it, I will tell you what I would do and what it would cost. If I cannot, I will tell you that too, and it costs you nothing either way. I will also tell you plainly if I think the thing is not worth building, which happens reasonably often.
No obligation attached to sending this, and nothing automated follows it. You will get a reply from me within a few days.