Uncertain
Experimenting with ChatGPT, paralyzed by options. Most companies live here longer than they should.
Fractional Chief AI Officer
You're betting the company on AI.
Bet it on purpose.
AI is the bet every founder is making right now. The question isn't whether to use it, it's whether you're using it intentionally. A fractional Chief AI Officer gives you a partner who's shipped real AI, so you back the right bets and skip the expensive theater.
Roughly 9 in 10 employees already use AI tools. Far fewer companies have any strategy for it. That gap is where data leaks, wasted spend, and lost talent live.
You don't win by shutting AI down or letting it run wild. You win by being intentional, and the companies that succeed won't be the fastest, they'll be the most deliberate.
The AI maturity curve
Every company is somewhere on this curve.
Knowing where you stand is the first move. The next is deciding, deliberately, how to climb.
Scrambling
Moving fast, no strategy. Duplicated tools, wasted spend, and quiet risk piling up.
Strategic
Leadership aligned. Small, measurable pilots tied to real business problems, not hype.
Embedded
Multiple AI workflows in production, with governance and training behind them.
Advisor
AI is in your DNA. You're the company others ask how it's actually done.
What a fractional CAIO does
Strategy, guardrails, and the hard calls.
An AI strategy tied to business problems
We start from the outcome you need and work back to the model, not the other way around. Tools are the last decision, not the first.
Pick the bets that actually ship
Kill the demos that look great and die in production. Back the few use cases with real ROI and a path to deploy.
Guardrails that don't slow you down
Secure adoption, sane data handling, and a fix for the shadow-AI problem, without strangling the momentum that makes you fast.
Build vs. buy vs. wait
The call on every AI feature, made by someone who has actually shipped them, and knows when the honest answer is 'not yet.'
Make your team AI-fluent
AI fluency is now table stakes for keeping good people. I bring your team up the curve so the capability outlasts the engagement.
Selected work
AI that shipped.
Turning an AI vision into pilots
A clinical-decision-support startup had powerful AI but no near-term story buyers could act on. I sharpened the use case (mental health in primary care and OB/GYN), the ROI narrative, and a concrete path to pilots.
A focused, fundable AI story stakeholders could rally behind.
Production-grade from day one
As fractional CTO for an at-home health-testing platform, I built the engineering process and security posture that let AI and data workflows scale responsibly under real regulatory pressure.
Acquired by Recuro Health in 2021.
He knew how to work with healthcare clients and their corporate constraints, and how to turn our mission into something the market could actually buy.
Questions
What founders ask first.
A fractional Chief AI Officer, what is that?
Senior AI leadership without a full-time exec hire. Someone who owns your AI strategy, sets the guardrails, and makes the build / buy / wait calls, on a fraction of the cost and commitment.
We're early. Isn't a CAIO overkill?
It's the opposite. The earlier you're intentional about AI, the less budget you torch and the less you have to unwind later. Intentional beats fast.
Do you build the AI, or just advise on it?
Both. I've shipped real AI products, not just slide decks about them, so I can set strategy and get hands-on when the team needs it.
How is this different from your fractional CTO work?
Same operator, sharper lens. The CTO role covers your whole tech org; the CAIO role is specifically your AI strategy, adoption, and risk. Many founders want both, see the fractional CTO page.
What about data security and compliance?
Built in, not bolted on. Secure adoption and the shadow-AI problem are core to the job, especially in regulated spaces like healthtech, where I've spent a lot of years.
How I think
A few takes on AI.
Ikigai: The Four Circles I Draw Before I Say Yes
A founder asked why I went fractional. I drew four circles on a napkin. The Japanese call the center ikigai, a reason to…
84% Of The Planet Has Never Used AI. Your Strategy Is Built For The Other 16%.
Roughly 6.8 billion people have never typed a prompt. About 1.3 billion have used a free chatbot. The number paying for …
The Best Coffee Roaster In Town Is Not On Google. Evan Dobas Of CivicLift Is Fixing That.
Your town has the culture. It does not have the plumbing. AI changed which traffic matters, and most communities have no…
Make your AI bet the deliberate one.
Tell me what you're building and where AI fits. We'll find the one or two moves worth making now, and the ones worth ignoring.
Book a Call