I built a consulting intake process that turns a founder's vague 'we need AI' into a concrete infrastructure roadmap in one call. Here's how it works.
Most founders come in saying the same thing: 'We need to add AI to our product.' That's not a brief. That's a panic statement.
So I built a structured intake flow specifically for early-stage startups. Before we ever get on a call, founders submit their core challenge through a simple form. Name, email, and one question: what's the actual problem you're trying to solve?
That single input changes everything. By the time we're on the call, I've already mapped where AI actually fits their stack - and where it doesn't. No discovery theater. No 3-week scoping engagement. Just a focused 45-minute session that ends with a concrete next step.
The difference between a generic IT consultancy and what I do at CloudSage is the starting point. Generic consultancies start with a sales process. I start with your architecture.
I've run this with founders building in fintech, logistics, and B2B SaaS. The pattern is almost always the same: they thought they had an AI problem. They actually had an infrastructure sequencing problem. Fix the sequence, and the AI layer becomes obvious.
Has anyone else found that founders arrive with the wrong diagnosis for their own technical bottlenecks? Curious how others are handling the 'we need AI' brief.