The Business Diagnostic
Before anyone sells you a solution, find out what is actually holding you back.
A structured session with your leadership team and a written, prioritized diagnosis of what is costing you most — including a blunt “don't build anything” where that is the honest answer. Free, we run it ourselves, and capped.
- 45–60 minutes with your leadership team
- One per company
- No system access needed
- No pitch
Why this exists
Most advice arrives with the answer already chosen.
You already know something is wrong; what you don't have is a name for it. Margin that used to be there and isn't. Stock sitting still while more of it gets ordered. The same order typed into three systems by three people. A decision on hold until someone finishes the report. Quotes going out two days late and nobody able to say why. Half of what makes the firm work living in two people's heads.
Take that to most people and you get their product back: the software company finds a software problem, the AI vendor finds an AI problem, the consultancy finds a strategy problem. We sell no product, hold no license and take no commission from anyone — which is exactly why we can afford to look at your business first and then tell you the cause is a pricing rule, a handover nobody owns, or a report nobody trusts. And when the answer is something that has to be built, we build it.
What you get
The written diagnosis.
Three to five pages, written by us personally — no juniors, no template engine. Built so page one can be forwarded to your board on its own.
The written guarantee
Expect at least one thing we'll tell you not to fix — or not to fix yet — with the reason, in writing. If what matters most turns out to be a process change and no new system, the diagnosis says exactly that. And if everything you bring genuinely holds up, it says that plainly instead: what it will never do is manufacture a verdict, in either direction.
- A one-page decision memo with the verdict in the title — not buried on page four
- Every problem we find, plotted on one map: what it costs you × how hard it is to fix, each with what you risk by leaving it alone
- For anything that would have to be built, the Gate Zero check in writing: build now / not yet / don't build, with cost band, time-to-production, and walk-away conditions
- A named section — “Not worth fixing yet” — with the reason for every one of them
- Next steps that include the ones you can take without hiring us
The method
How we look at the business — and where Gate Zero comes in.
We arrive without a candidate solution. Seven things get looked at, in your numbers and your vocabulary, and only what survives them is worth spending on. Anything that would have to be built then goes through Gate Zero — the formal go/no-go check a production system faces, applied before the money:
- 01
Value at stake
Euros or hours attached to a named workflow — conservative base case, assumptions stated. No hockey sticks.
- 02
Data reality
Does the information this depends on actually exist, is it clean, and can you get to it today — or does it live in someone's head?
- 03
How the work really runs
The process as people actually do it, not as the diagram says: the workarounds, the re-keying, the second spreadsheet nobody mentions.
- 04
Error tolerance vs stakes
Where does a mistake land today, who notices, and what has it cost by the time someone catches it?
- 05
Whether the fix can be measured
If this changes, does the improvement show up in numbers you already have — or would you be taking our word for it?
- 06
Cost, effort & ownership
What a fix costs to run and not only to build, and who inside the firm owns it once we are gone.
- 07
Exposure & dependency
Single points of failure, key-person risk, personal data nobody can account for, and the rules you are already subject to — including where the EU AI Act applies to you.
Three rules, stated in every diagnosis
- What matters most is agreed with you before anything is scored.
- No single aggregate “maturity score” — the weakest dimension decides; averages hide.
- Every score carries a confidence level and its declared assumptions.
Four of the questions we actually ask
- “Where does a mistake land today — and who notices?”
- “Which decisions are waiting on information you don't have?”
- “What does this cost you every month it stays as it is?”
- “What happens to this if the person who runs it leaves?”
Where something does get built, the exposure read cross-references the EU AI Act (Article 6 / Annex III), the NIST AI Risk Management Framework, and the OWASP Top 10 for LLM applications.
How it runs
Four steps, two to four weeks.
- 1
Apply
10 minutesTen questions about the firm, about what isn't working, and about where your numbers live. We read every application personally — and we decline some. That's the first verdict, and it happens before any call.
- 2
The diagnostic session
45–60 minutesA structured session with your leadership team — we come to understand the business, not to present anything. We follow the money and the friction through the processes you actually run, and we ask the questions production would eventually ask anyway. Walkthrough only: no credentials, no system access, nothing leaves your walls.
- 3
The diagnosis is written
within a weekEvery problem found is scored on the seven dimensions and plotted on one map: what it costs you by how hard it is to fix. Written by us, on your numbers and in your vocabulary.
- 4
The verdict walkthrough
30 minutesYou get the diagnosis and a blunt call on the one thing to fix first: now, not yet — and exactly what unlocks it — or leave it alone. Where the answer is something to build, it comes with the Gate Zero verdict. The document is yours either way.
Why it's free
It's a diagnosis, not the treatment.
This is how we both find out whether working together makes sense. You get the diagnosis and the priority order; the paid engagements do the work. It stays free because it's capped: we run every session and write every diagnosis ourselves — at most three per month, one per company, ever.
If it's a go
and the fit is there, the diagnosis maps each problem worth solving to the engagement that closes it — including the ones we would build ourselves. You'll know the shape of the next step before you commit to anything.
If it's a no-go
you keep the diagnosis, there is no follow-up sequence, and that's the end — unless you write first. A no-go followed by nurture emails would make the verdict worthless.
Fit
Who it's for — and who it isn't.
This is for you if
- Owners and managers who can see the symptom but not the cause
- Firms where margin, stock or cash is drifting and the reason isn't obvious
- Companies that already bought a system or ran a pilot and have little to show for it
- Data-sensitive businesses weighing what can and cannot leave their walls
It isn't if
- Companies looking for a free implementation plan — this is a verdict, not a blueprint
- Teams without an executive sponsor willing to attend the session
- Anyone shopping for validation of a decision already made — some diagnoses say don't build anything, and yours might
Who runs it
“The method exists because these are the checks we run before we ship anything.”
- Designs, builds and ships production systems — including AI and LLM systems: retrieval tuning, output validation, monitoring, cost and latency budgets
- Built a self-hosted, retrieval-augmented AI assistant that runs fully offline on hardware a business already owns
- Production security engineer with a data-protection background
- Founded two SaaS products; lead architect of a multi-tenant enterprise platform
Not a quiz. Not a slide-deck engagement.
This is not a ten-minute self-scoring quiz, and not a six-figure assessment delivered by junior analysts. It is the diagnosis a paid audit would start with, done by the same hands that would build the fix. We sell no product, no license and no hardware, and we take no commission from any vendor — which is exactly why we can afford to tell you not to build anything. A “don't build” costs us nothing, and that is the only condition under which a “build” means anything.
The diagnosis is written to be useful whether or not you ever hire us.
Apply
Apply for the Business Diagnostic.
Ten questions, about ten minutes. We read every application personally — some are declined, and that's the first verdict. If accepted, you'll get the exact session agenda before you commit an hour of your leadership team's time.
Free · one per company · at most three per month · walkthrough only, no system access