AI in your business,
without betting the business on it.
I'm a hands-on engineer and fractional CTO. Twenty years shipping production software, now helping companies put AI to work in ways that are useful, measured, and safe to run. Not slideware. Not a demo that falls over in week two.
Most AI projects don't fail on the model. They fail on everything around it: reliability, governance, and someone senior who's still there when it breaks.
The market is full of no-code agencies wiring up tools they're paid to recommend, and strategy decks with no implementation behind them. I do the opposite. I find where AI actually pays off in your business, build it properly, and leave your team able to run it. Sometimes the honest answer is that you don't need AI for the thing you asked about, and I'll tell you that too.
Three legs, in order.
No long discovery theatre. We chart the course, build the thing, and hand you the helm. Each leg stands on its own, so you can stop after any of them.
Chart
A short, paid audit of where AI fits your business and where it doesn't. You get a plain plan with costs, risks, and expected payback that you could hand to any engineer. No sales pitch attached.
Build
I build the thing. Real software integrated with your stack: durable, observable, and tested against the way it will actually be used. Your data stays yours and trains no one's model.
Embed
You leave with working systems, documentation, and people on your team who understand them. The goal is that you don't need me afterwards, not that you depend on me.
A few things this does inside a business.
Concrete examples, not buzzwords. Each one is the kind of repeated work a small team loses hours to every week.
Triage the inbox
Sort incoming requests, draft the obvious replies, flag what's urgent, and route the rest to the right person. The team approves rather than types.
Saves hours a weekRead the long document
Summarise contracts, briefs, reports, and policies into the points that matter, so nobody has to read forty pages to find the three lines that count.
Decision in minutesKeep the pipeline moving
Prepare follow-ups, update records, qualify enquiries, and nudge work to the next stage, so nothing stalls because someone forgot to push it along.
Nothing slipsNew
Qualified
Follow-up
Ask your own files
Let staff ask questions of your processes, FAQs, and internal guidance and get an answer with the source attached, instead of hunting through a shared drive.
Answers, with sourcesThe senior person is the one doing the work.
You're not buying a junior team with a partner's name on the invoice. You get one experienced engineer, accountable end to end.
Twenty years building, still writing code
Agency-side, in-house, and as a CTO. I can talk to your board and your developers in the same afternoon, and I do.
Real AI pipelines, not slideware
I build AI video and agent systems in production today, across Elixir, Python, and TypeScript. I know where these systems break because I've broken them.
GDPR by default, ISO 27001 experience
I've taken a company through ISO 27001 certification. If you're in a regulated or data-sensitive space, that's the starting point, not an afterthought.
No kickbacks, no lock-in
No tool I'm paid to recommend, no reseller margin hidden in your bill. You own the code and the accounts from day one.
An honest fit check.
Good fit
- Founders and teams who want AI to do real work, not run a chatbot demo
- Companies burned once by a no-code build or an agency that vanished
- Regulated or data-sensitive businesses that can't hand their data to just anyone
- Teams that need senior AI leadership but not a full-time CTO salary
Not a fit
- Anyone shopping purely for the cheapest possible chatbot
- A strategy deck with no intention of building anything
- Teams wanting to outsource the thinking entirely
- Projects where AI is the answer before the question is known
A few fixed rules.
Paid discovery first, so the plan is honest rather than a pitch.
Fixed scope where it can be fixed, so you aren't billed for my learning curve.
Plain language. No jargon wall, no hiding behind acronyms.
Honest about limits. I'll tell you what AI can't do for you yet.
Tell me what you're trying to do.
A 30-minute working call, not a sales call. Bring a real problem and you'll leave with a useful first read on it, whether or not we work together.
Prefer email? info@portolantech.com