№ 01
The room goes quiet
Someone asks “so, what’s our AI position?” and everyone looks at the youngest person in the room. That’s not a strategy.
Fractional Chief AI Officer · Startups to boards
Everyone’s talking about AI.Time somebody made the calls.
I'm Mark Caulfield. I've built AI since 2019, for everyone from two-founder startups to the UK's largest financial institutions. One or two days a month, I'm at your table to help you decide, then make it happen.
From £2,750 a month · two seats open this quarter
Why this seat
Everyone agrees AI matters. So who, at your table, owns it?
№ 02
Vendors can smell budget
Everyone selling AI right now sounds confident. Few are right. You need someone at the table who can tell judgement from theatre, with no commission riding on the answer.
№ 03
A full-time hire is the wrong size
A Chief AI Officer costs £120k+ and takes six months to find. Most businesses need two days a month of the right person, not a department.
The seat
What you get. In plain terms.
Strategy, steered
A living AI plan ranked by payback, reviewed with you every quarter.
Vendor judgement
Every pitch, contract and renewal tested by someone with nothing to gain from the answer.
Tactics for this quarter
The quick, unglamorous wins your team can bank now. I find them, then I make sure they ship.
Guardrails you can sign off
A data policy that stands up to UK GDPR, and rules for how AI touches your customers. Nothing goes out that embarrasses you.
A monthly working session
Round the table with your decision-makers once a month, whether that’s a full board or two founders. Decisions get made and they stick.
The watch, kept
The tools and the rules change every month. I track it all so nobody on your payroll has to.
Want a deeper map before you commit? There’s a fixed-fee, two-week audit for that. Ask about it on the call.
Month one
No warm-up phase. Here’s the first month.
Weeks one & two
I listen
I sit with the people who run the place and watch how the work actually moves. Then I can tell you where AI pays in your business, and where it would just be theatre.
Week three
The plan
A ranked, priced AI position you can sign off: strategy for the year, tactics for the quarter.
Week four
First moves
The quickest wins get started, each with an owner. Next time someone asks “what’s our AI position?”, there’s an answer.
The person in the seat
My obsession is finding better ways to do things, and AI is the most powerful tool for that I've ever seen. You'll get plain English from me, and an honest 'I don't know' when that's the truth.
Mark Caulfield has built products and companies for over two decades. He has worked in sectors from banking to government all over the world, and partnered with universities on applied AI research. More than once he has stepped into a business in real trouble and helped walk it back to solid ground. He does his best thinking up a Highland hill with two dogs, and he answers his own email.
AI since 2019Banking · Retail · GovernmentUniversity research partnerNo vendor commissions
The record
Companies he has co-founded or rescued have raised more than £50m in the past three years.
AI platforms he built are used by some of the UK’s largest financial institutions.
Questions
Asked, answered, honestly.
The same job a full-time one does, at a smaller dose. I steer the strategy, keep watch on vendors and guardrails, and report back at whatever level you run: a board pack for some clients, a kitchen-table catch-up for others. One to two days a month, embedded with your team.
Clients range from two founders moving fast to established firms of 250 people. The common thread is that AI clearly matters to the business and nobody in-house owns it. If that sounds like you, you’re the right size.
Both. That’s the point of the tactics. When the plan calls for an automation or an assistant, I scope it and it gets built under the same roof, or handed to your people with a proper spec. Either way, no black boxes and no dependency.
None. Nobody pays me margins or commissions, and I have no favourite vendor. I recommend whatever pays back fastest for you. Sometimes that’s unglamorous software, and occasionally it’s no AI at all.
Taken seriously from day one. I work UK-GDPR-first and prefer private-by-default setups, and I’ll happily talk to your lawyer or IT provider. Nothing of yours is used to train anyone’s models.
You’d get a beautiful 80-page deck and a junior team learning on your time. With me you get one senior person who has built these systems, at your table every month, for less than their scoping phase.
Start here
Tell me where AI sits on your agenda.
Fill this in and I reply personally, usually within one working day. No sales team and no mailing list, just a reply from me.
Or email info@ginger.land