Four ways to bring me in: a fractional seat at the table, a monthly mentorship, a fixed sprint, or hands-on help getting the work built. Pick the shape that fits where you are.
Pick the shape that matches where you are. All four sit alongside my enterprise work and bring the same rigour at founder scale.
For founders who need a senior pair of hands on data and AI, but not a full hire.
I sit inside the business part-time and ongoing. In key meetings, on the data and tooling, on the AI calls you're not sure how to make. The aim is simple: better decisions from the numbers you already have, and a team that knows what to do with them.
Typically 2 to 4 days per month · Minimum 3-month engagement
For business owners working through data, systems or AI calls on their own.
A monthly conversation with someone who's built and led this kind of work before. We talk about what you're actually wrestling with: which tools are worth the money, what the numbers are telling you, how to build reporting your team will use, and where AI fits at your stage.
Monthly sessions, with support between calls.
For founders who need clarity fast.
Four to six weeks. I work through what you've got, what's missing, and what's worth doing next. You come out with a short, ordered list of moves, the reasons behind each, and a clear view of where to start. Carry on with me after, or take it and run.
4 to 6 weeks · Fixed scope.
For founders who have the plan and need help getting it built.
Picking the right tools, watching the build, running the migration, keeping suppliers honest. I work next to your team to make sure what gets shipped is what you actually agreed to. Same standard as the bigger work, sized for you.
Scoped to the build.
For founders with one specific decision and an outside view to settle it.
90 minutes · £150 · For Founders, business & Leaders with a specific data, systems or transformation decision. Bring one call: a tool choice, a data question, an AI roadmap question, a hiring or org-design question. Pre-read, recorded session, written follow-up.
Single session · Book direct.
Six calls you'll need to make in your first year of scale. Short, direct, no fluff. Written for founders who'd rather decide once than dither for a quarter.
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Founders come to me when they're trying to make sense of messy or siloed business data, choose and implement the right tech stack for their stage, or build reporting and dashboards that actually drive decisions.
We work through where AI adds real value versus where it's noise, how to create data processes that scale with the business, and how to prepare data infrastructure ahead of funding rounds or audits.
I've worked with founders across tech, creative, professional services, e-commerce, health and social impact. A few of those in practice.
A founder building in the property data space with good instincts and a growing product, but no coherent data strategy underneath it. Collecting information across five different tools, no single source of truth, and uncertain whether AI was genuinely relevant or just noise.
We mapped what data they actually had and where it lived, found the gaps that were costing them real time, and built a 90-day plan they could run themselves. They stopped chasing tools and started making decisions.
A boutique consultancy heading into a funding conversation they weren't quite ready for. Investors were asking questions about revenue by service line, client retention and pipeline visibility that they couldn't answer cleanly.
A focused four-week strategy sprint. Audited their current setup, mapped the gaps, produced a prioritised roadmap with realistic cost estimates. They walked into their funding conversations with a credible data story for the first time.
A media founder generating revenue across newsletters, events, and brand partnerships, but with no clear picture of which streams were worth investing in further. Every decision was instinct. None of it was backed by numbers they trusted.
Defined the metrics that actually mattered, consolidated audience and revenue data into one place, and built a reporting setup that made the business legible to them and to potential partners.
A founder-led product brand with real commercial momentum and a fragmented data problem. Shopify, email, paid, all running separately, none of it connected. Making budget decisions in the dark.
Scoped and oversaw a unified analytics build that pulled every channel into one view. For the first time, they had a clear picture of where customers were coming from, what it cost to acquire them, and which products were driving repeat purchase.
Stack · BigQuery, Looker Studio
An early-stage health platform with strong traction heading into a Series A. Messy data, inconsistent reporting, and an inability to produce the metrics investors were asking for with any confidence.
Built their reporting infrastructure from scratch, defined the data model, established the reporting layer, and created a metrics framework their team could own going forward. They closed the round.
Stack · Dynamics 365, Power BI
A fast-scaling creative agency drowning in operational data they couldn't use. Project profitability, resource allocation, client reporting, all in spreadsheets nobody fully trusted.
Fractional AI and data lead for four months. Audited their systems, consolidated everything into a single reporting environment, built dashboards the team actually used. Leadership moved from gut-feel to evidence-backed decisions without adding a single full-time hire.
A four-module platform designed to give residents a genuine voice and give organisations the data infrastructure to act on what they hear.
Owned the full product strategy from blank page to submission. The bid secured £285,000 from the Social Housing Innovation Fund.
A SaaS founder who knew AI mattered to their roadmap but couldn't answer the basic question: what should we actually build, and when?
Ran an AI readiness audit across product, operations and data. Came back with a short list: build now, park for later, leave alone. They stopped chasing every announcement and got back to shipping the things that mattered.
I run Stratford Ellis, a small UK consultancy that gets brought in when the data or the systems matter, and the project can't afford to fall over. Most of that work is with bigger organisations: messy migrations, regulated change, the kind of thing a board is watching.
The founder work sits alongside it. Smaller, often quicker, and honestly the part I enjoy most. The decisions are real, the budgets are tight, and you see the change land in weeks rather than quarters.
I've built AI-backed platforms, written the kind of specs that get funded, and walked teams through data problems most people would rather not touch. That's what comes into the room when we work together.
I take on a small number of founder clients at any one time to protect the quality of the work. If you're a founder trying to figure out your data, your systems or your AI strategy, and you want someone who's done this at scale and can translate it for your world, I'd like to hear from you.
Current availability · Limited spots
Fractional leadership, fixed-scope resets, advisory and independent reviews. For organisations of any size with a system to choose, a migration to land or a number that won't add up.
A handful of notes from leaders, founders and chairs I've worked alongside.
Barbs walked into a programme that had been stuck for nine months and had us all reading off the same page inside a fortnight. The plan we left with was the one we actually ran.
She tells you what she thinks. No fluff, no vendor agenda. Our board got a read on our data we could finally act on, and a short list of fixes we could start on Monday.
Having Barbs in the room changed how we made the call. She knew the context from month two and saved us from at least one expensive mistake on the systems side.