Alpaca AI Advisory

The fractional Chief AI Officer for $5–50M founder-led companies.

I help your exec team and your board navigate AI strategy — what to build, what to buy, what to ignore, and how to talk about it externally — without the cost or commitment of a full-time CAIO hire.

Book a 30-minute intro call

Two ways to work together

The core offering

Advisor Retainer

$7,500/mo

Monthly access to your fractional CAIO.

What you get each month:

  • • 2× 60-minute strategy sessions with the founder/CEO + relevant execs
  • • Asynchronous Slack and email access (responses within 24 business hours; not on-demand)
  • • 1 board or leadership briefing per quarter — slides + live presentation
  • • Ongoing roadmap iteration as the AI landscape and your business shift
  • • Vendor and tool opinions on demand (“should we buy X, build Y, or wait?”)
  • • Continuous translation between your data/engineering team and your exec team

Terms: 3-month minimum commitment, month-to-month thereafter. Net-15 invoicing. Cancel any time after the minimum.

Outcome: By month 3, your exec team can confidently answer any AI question coming from the board, your customers, your investors, or your own team — and you have a written 12-month roadmap that's actually being executed.

Tiers (negotiable in proposals):

  • • $5K/mo — light retainer, 1 session/month + async, no board briefing
  • • $7.5K/mo — standard (lead with this)
  • • $10K/mo — high-touch, weekly sessions + active roadmap involvement
Discuss a retainer →

Fixed-scope on-ramp

AI Readiness Audit

$20,000 · 4–6 weeks

The on-ramp for clients who want a concrete deliverable before committing to a retainer.

Timeline:

  • Week 1: Stakeholder interviews (founder, exec team, data/eng lead, 2–3 functional leads). Current-state mapping of where AI already touches the business.
  • Weeks 2–3: Opportunity discovery. Workflow analysis, vendor landscape scan, build-vs-buy decisions per opportunity.
  • Weeks 4–5: 90-day roadmap drafting. ROI prioritization. Risk register.
  • Week 6: Final report + exec readout deck + live presentation.

Deliverables:

  • • 20–30 page written report
  • • 90-day implementation roadmap (Notion or equivalent, yours to keep)
  • • Executive readout slide deck
  • • Vendor and tool shortlist with rationale

Terms: $20,000 fixed. 50% on signature, 50% on delivery of final report. 6-week timeline from kickoff.

Conversion clause: If you sign an Advisor Retainer within 30 days of audit close, 50% of the audit fee ($10,000) credits against your first 3 months of retainer.

Scope an audit →

Who this is for

  • • $5–50M annual revenue
  • • Founder-led (founder is the buyer or the founder's direct report is)
  • • Exec team has started asking the AI question and not getting good answers internally
  • • Hiring a full-time CAIO is overkill at your stage but you need more than ad-hoc reading and YouTube

Who this is not for

  • • Pre-revenue startups (you need a builder, not an advisor)
  • • Companies needing production AI engineering staff (different hire)
  • • Enterprises >$100M (you should hire full-time)
  • • Anyone looking for a body to attend meetings and rubber-stamp decisions

Why me

Nathan A. Mahan. I lead AI initiatives inside a global Fortune 500 consumer brand by day and have been working hands-on with large language models since the GPT-3 beta in 2020 — before this technology had a market category.

I'm also the founder and operator of Analog Camera Company, a hybrid hardware + software business I built, ran, and recently sold. I've shipped real products to real customers with real liability — not just slide decks.

And I run LifeOS — a personal AI agent operating system with 16+ cron-scheduled Claude agents in production. The same orchestration patterns and judgment I apply to my own infrastructure are what I bring to client engagements.

What I don't do

  • • I don't build production AI systems for clients. (I'll spec what to build and who should build it. If you need build capacity, I'll refer you out and stay involved as advisor.)
  • • I don't replace your data team, engineering team, or any in-house technical hire. I make those teams more effective.
  • • I don't sell tools as an affiliate, take vendor kickbacks, or carry favored partnerships. My vendor opinions are paid for by you and only you.
  • • I don't take engagements that overlap with my day-job employer's competitive scope. If we have a conflict, I'll say so and decline.

How to start

  1. 1. Book a 30-minute intro call
  2. 2. We talk through your situation — no pitch, no slides.
  3. 3.If there's a fit, I send a proposal (audit, retainer, or both) within 48 hours.
  4. 4. Sign + kickoff within 1 week of proposal acceptance.
Book a callEmail nate@alpacaadvisor.ai