Vendor calls are choreographed. Sales engineers hide the failure modes. We sit on your side of the table and read what the demo did not show.

Every AI vendor pitch on the market today follows roughly the same script. There is a slide about the founding team. There is a hero use case that always works. There is a live demo that always works, run against data the vendor picked. There is a price that is either suspiciously specific or suspiciously undefined. And there is a request to sign a short PoC agreement that turns into an eighteen-month enterprise commitment before anyone in your organization has meaningfully evaluated whether the thing works at your scale, on your data, in your regulatory environment.

We evaluate it before you sign. That is the entire practice.

What we produce

Independent vendor scorecard. A written evaluation of each shortlist vendor against a shared rubric — capability, security posture, roadmap credibility, unit economics, exit friction, incumbent-friendliness. No stars, no traffic lights. Actual sentences, so a board can read them.
PoC scope & success criteria. A written PoC design that produces a real answer, not a marketing artifact. Includes the actual metrics that would justify a purchase, the failure modes the vendor won't proactively surface, and the timebox after which we stop and reassess.
Build-versus-buy read. Where you're evaluating internal build against a purchased solution, an honest read of both. Most build cases we've seen were sold internally by someone who wanted to build them. Most buy cases we've seen were sold externally by someone with a quota. We work from neither incentive.
Contract & procurement review. A pass over the MSA, order form, DPA, and any auto-renewal or price-escalator language. Not a legal opinion — your counsel writes those — but the operational read that tells your counsel what to fight for.

Deliverable

Written scorecard

Plus a go / no-go recommendation and, where warranted, a PoC design.

Timeline

2–5 weeks

Faster if you're between rounds and the calendar demands it.

Independence

Vendor-blind

We do not take commissions, referral fees, or partner incentives from any vendor we evaluate. Ever.

What we don't do

We don't sell you a preferred platform. Every consulting firm with an AI practice has a stack they'd rather you standardize on, whether or not they say so. We don't. Our recommendation on a given engagement is whichever tool the honest evaluation surfaces — and where the honest evaluation surfaces “none of the above,” that is what we tell you.

We don't run the vendor's demo for them. We run one of yours. We use your data, your workflows, your regulatory constraints, and we score against the outcomes that matter to your P&L — not the ones that look best in a Loom.

A note on procurement pressure

Every operator we've worked with has felt the pressure to move fast because a competitor announced something, or because the CEO saw a demo, or because a board member forwarded a link. Fast is fine. Fast without diligence is not fast — it is the beginning of an eighteen-month remediation project. We help you move fast without paying for that later.

Engagement

Vendor diligence is typically project-shaped — a two-to-five-week evaluation, delivered as a written scorecard and a working session to walk the recommendation. Fee structures are fixed-fee, scoped to the number of vendors on the shortlist. We do not accept engagements where the vendor pays.

Introductions happen by referral. If you were pointed here by someone we work with, mention their name when you write. If not, tell us plainly what you're evaluating and what would tip the decision. We reply within two business days.