Here's exactly how
to work with me.

Five shapes of engagement. Rough pricing. What you should bring. What I won't do. Pick the one that fits — or email me and we'll figure it out.

Five shapes

1
A single strategy call
Two hours. We work through your specific problem. You leave with a recommendation, three concrete next steps, and a straight answer on what's worth pursuing.
Best for: "We need a sanity check before we commit."
$1,500 — pay after the call if it was useful.
2
A two-week sprint
Scoped engagement to ship one specific thing: an MVP, a vendor evaluation, an AI feasibility study, a roadmap that actually maps. Daily check-ins. Written deliverable at the end.
Best for: "We need this figured out and shipped, not researched."
$15,000 – $30,000 depending on scope.
3
A monthly advisor retainer
On-call for your team. Calls when you need them, Slack between. 5–10 hours a month. I'm the second opinion on architecture, product, hiring, vendor decisions, the hard conversations.
Best for: founders and CTOs who don't need a full hire but want someone senior in the loop.
$5,000 / month.
4
Fractional Head of AI
10–25 hours a week embedded with your team. Strategy + builds + the awkward conversations. I sit in your standups, write the AI roadmap, evaluate vendors, code where it matters, and ship.
Best for: SMBs that have an AI strategy and need someone to run it.
$10,000 – $15,000 / month.
5
Team workshop or training
Half-day or full-day session for your leadership team. What AI can and can't do for your specific business, how to evaluate vendors, how to think about build-vs-buy, what to ship first.
Best for: leadership teams that need everyone on the same page before committing budget.
$7,500 – $15,000 depending on prep and format.

Or — something else entirely.
Plenty of useful work doesn't fit a template. Email me with what you've got.

How we start

  1. Email me at david [at] edandhelen.com with what you're trying to solve. A paragraph is plenty — don't write me a brief.
  2. 30-minute call within a week. Free. I'll tell you honestly whether I'm the right fit. If I'm not, I'll point you to someone who is.
  3. Pick a shape and start. One-page agreement, not a twelve-page MSA. We start the following week.

Who this is for, and who it isn't.

Good fit

Founders, CTOs, COOs, owners, GMs of businesses that win their work through quotes and proposals — where someone with authority still sees every rule your people give a customer. Any stage with AI. Teams that ship. People with a real problem who want to talk to a real practitioner about it.

Bad fit

Enterprises that need a fifty-page strategy deck before anyone is allowed to make a decision. Companies looking for someone to validate a choice they've already made. Stealth founders who can't describe their product until I sign an NDA. Anyone shopping for the cheapest consultant — I'm not it.

What I've shipped

DVT Corporation, Director of Business Development, 1992–2005
$115M acquisition by Cognex. Built the channel that took DVT from incubator to acquisition over thirteen years.
DataComplex, founder, 2005–2009
Cloud event-processing platform before "cloud" was a buyer category.
Commercial greenhouse technology, VP of Engineering, 2019–2023
Hardware + software + cloud control system for commercial greenhouses. Won the 2021 Medal of Excellence — Technology of the Year.
Saivvi, CTO, 2023–present
AI product company for non-technical operators.

Plus thirty years of channel work, B2B sales operations, and consulting across motion control, machine vision, industrial IoT, agricultural technology, and computer vision.

Start here

david [at] edandhelen.com

A paragraph about what you're working on is plenty.