You know AI matters to your business. You don't have a Big Four budget, and you don't want a developer who has never run a P&L. I've spent 25 years at the top of enterprise technology, and I build AI systems myself. I find where AI makes you money, build it, and take my fee only from the value I add.
The problem
Their teams and day rates are built for enterprise budgets. A firm your size gets a strategy deck and an invoice.
You end up with technology looking for a problem, and you're left to work out whether it ever paid back.
You're running the company. AI is one more thing on a full plate, and the pace of change makes it hard to know what's real.
of UK businesses say limited AI skills or expertise holds them back.
say they haven't yet identified a use for AI in their organisation.
Knowing where AI pays, and having the skills to build it: those are the two gaps I close.
Source — DSIT, AI Adoption Research, Jan 2026 (3,500 UK businesses)Why me
Most people offering AI help come from one side. Consultants understand the boardroom and hand the build to someone else. Developers can build almost anything, but rarely start from your numbers.
I've sat at the leadership table in global technology firms, and I've designed and built live AI systems with my own hands. You get one person who owns the commercial case and the working system, with nothing lost in the handover.
Big budgets don't guarantee results either. 56% of CEOs worldwide say AI has delivered no significant financial benefit yet, and only one in eight has seen both higher revenue and lower cost. Spending isn't what separates them. Execution is. Source — PwC 29th Global CEO Survey, Jan 2026 (4,454 CEOs)
How it works
I sit with you and your leadership team and look for where AI moves the numbers you care about.
Before any work starts, we agree what success looks like in pounds, hours or risk reduced, so we both know what we're aiming at.
I build the system myself, working alongside your people, and stay until it is running in your business, not sitting in a pilot.
No day rates, no licences. I take a share of the value delivered against the targets we agreed. If it doesn't pay you, it doesn't pay me.
Got a part of the business that should be working harder? Start there.
Talk to me →The record
I build and run AI businesses of my own, in markets where I already have standing. That's where the hands-on experience comes from.
Ventures
An AI consultancy for defence and government, where my RAF and enterprise background gives me standing. It runs as a separate company from Starpave.
Bid intelligence and bid writing for contractors competing for UK social-housing work. It runs as its own company, separate from Starpave.
Built & shipped
Designed and built a systematic-trading system from scratch: multi-agent AI, institutional-grade risk governance, full audit trail. Live and running.
From standing start to a signed government contract in intelligent perimeter security.
Helping charities navigate multi-million-pound grant programmes: shaping the applications and writing the business cases behind them.
Where I'm working now
Building adjacent communities and new revenue streams around a highly successful core.
Driving efficiencies and opening new revenue through membership and scheme design.
Turning a rich, underused data asset into commercial advantage.
Helping international scale-ups multiply customers and revenue as they expand into new markets.
About
I'm Ian Pratley. I began as a commissioned officer in the RAF, then spent 25 years in enterprise technology at Reuters, Oracle, Cisco and ServiceNow. I left the salary behind on one principle: only build where you have an unfair advantage.
I started with the hardest thing I could find: a systematic-trading platform, built from the ground up. Markets are unforgiving, and the lesson stuck. AI delivers when someone treats it as a commercial problem rather than a technology experiment.
Now I bring both halves to owners and CEOs who know they have to move on AI but don't have the time or the in-house skills: the commercial judgement to find where it pays, and the ability to build it.
Everything I advise, I've done. That's the whole point of Starpave.
Contact
Tell me what your business does and where it's stuck. If AI can make a real difference, I'll show you where. If it can't, I'll tell you that too.