Insights

What We're
Thinking About.

No hot takes. No thought-leadership theater. Just the patterns we keep seeing, the frameworks we keep using, and the operator-level advice we'd give a friend running a $5M–$50M business.

A cost, time, and risk comparison for $5M–$50M businesses

Fractional AI Team vs. Hiring Your First AI Engineer

Every growing business at $5M–$50M eventually hits the same fork in the road: hire an internal AI lead, or bring in an outside team on retainer. Here's what the tradeoff actually looks like when you price in risk, time-to-value, and the weeks-to-months it takes a solo hire to ship production-grade work.

April 19, 2026·7 min read

Five recurring failure modes — and what actually works

Why AI Projects Fail at $5M–$50M Businesses

AI is interesting. AI projects that produce revenue are rare. At the $5M–$50M scale, AI projects tend to fail in a small number of highly predictable ways. Here are the five we see most often, what causes each one, and the structural choices that reliably prevent them.

April 19, 2026·9 min read

A practical guide for non-technical operators

Agents vs. Automations vs. Workflows

Three words get used almost interchangeably — agents, automations, workflows — and mean very different things in practice. Knowing which one you actually need changes the budget, the build timeline, and what the output looks like. Here's the operator-level distinction, with examples from live client builds.

April 19, 2026·6 min read

What We'reThinking About.

Fractional AI Team vs. Hiring Your First AI Engineer

Why AI Projects Fail at $5M–$50M Businesses

Agents vs. Automations vs. Workflows

Start with a Free Assessment

What We're
Thinking About.