Duration
90 min
write-up included
Strategy advisory · AI focus · Owner-led business
Five technology waves.
Two kinds of company.
One decision, every time.
Price
€800
plus VAT
Format
Remote
or Hamburg
Worth it, or it's on me.
Each wave of new tech produces two kinds of company: the ones that buy the tool, and the ones that redesign the business around what the tool makes possible. I've advised through five of them. This is where the fifth one starts — ninety minutes, one real task out of your business, solved while you watch.
What happens
Something that works. Built in the room.
01
You bring the task
Something specific — one thing that costs you time or patience every single week. Not an “AI strategy.” An actual task.
02
We build it together
At a screen, on a flipchart, on the back of an envelope, but always live. You see every step, and we keep going until it runs. Not a demo of what would be possible — the thing itself.
03
It's yours
It works by the time we stop. You keep it, and you get it in writing so your team can use it without me in the room. What you do next is your decision, not my follow-on invoice.
Why and where I've seen this before
Most of my case work is about business decisions. Even the AI projects.
A handful of times in thirty years, a technology arrived that was supposed to change everything. Every time, the same thing happened: most companies eventually bought the tech, very few adapted the business around it — and the gap between those two responses is where the value went. I was in the room for each of them. Here is what it looked like.
2015
BAT · VYPE
The industry was defending share in a category that was shrinking. BAT built one that didn't exist yet — 6% of the DACH e-cigarette market in year one, 30% of revenue direct to consumer.
2016
Allianz
The insurance industry discovered digital advertising and out-spent the market. Allianz treated digital as a P&L line instead — 16 new products in twelve months, customer acquisition cost down 64%.
2016
Maserati
The automotive industry bought digital advertising. Maserati redesigned the moment of truth — the showroom floor and the test drive, where buyers actually decide. Test-drive conversion up 28%. Effie.
2017
ContiTech
Most acquirers merge the systems and call it integration. ContiTech rebuilt from the ground up how the combined business went to market — tender success rate up 11%, process redundancy down 18%.
2017
SEAT · VW Group
Everyone was buying a CRM platform. SEAT changed how decisions actually got made, with structures and processes built digital-ready — time-to-market for digital products down 30%.
2022
Wakunaga · KYOLIC
A Japanese manufacturer entering Germany. The default move is to buy a webshop and an agency retainer. We settled the commercial model first — direct against pharmacy and reseller — then built the ecosystem to fit it, then handed it over. The managing director ran the relaunch himself.
2023
Biogen
The reflex in pharma is more reps, more contacts, more reach. We rebuilt the communication architecture instead, so physicians, payers, policy and patients each got the one thing relevant to them rather than the same thing louder. Whispered the lines that truly mattered.
Most engagements begin with a brief and end with a different one.
2025 →
DarkTools, Canada
Came in as a website brief. Turned out to be an operating model and systems architecture job. PIM-led commerce, Europe-first tech stack, governed agentic AI, still running.
2026
Universität Hamburg Marketing
The brief said “AI integration.” The business goal underneath it was earning more from assets the university already owned. What it needed was a redesigned process and an end-to-end funnel; the architecture and the platforms followed.
Only one of these had AI in the brief. It still needed the process fixed before the technology could earn anything. That's the pattern: the label on the wave changes every few years, the order of operations doesn't. Change the logic, then buy the tool. AI has only changed the speed and the stakes.
From the field
Have I done this before? You bet.
My client didn't want to give the laptop back.
Canada, summer 2026. I'm building my client's first AI agent live, in front of their team. Across the table, the head of HR and marketing — right hand to the managing director, politely sceptical, visibly interested. I finish the agent on the big screen, name it “Bob,” and slide my MacBook across to her. “Your turn.”
A pause. “What — now?” An excited nod from the room. She clicks in, Bob walks her step by step through building her own assistant, and five minutes later there's a new colleague on the team — one there hadn't even been a budget for. It took me a while to get my laptop back.
What worked was the marketing lead doing it herself, hands on — a benefit she understood immediately. Not the demo. Not the sales deck. You catch mice with bacon, not lectures about it.
Who I am
I come from business. The tech baked in later.
Thirty years of strategy — in IT, in management consulting, in international agencies, and for the last few years independently, out of Hamburg. Almost every sector, from corporates through the Mittelstand down to the 20-staff roadrunner: Allianz, Beiersdorf, Continental, Leica, Maserati, Red Bull — and then the small boutique consultancy in Hamburg Schanze, or the fintech startup in Berlin.
I'm a proud digital immigrant by virtue of when I was born: surfing in front of every technology wave, without ever having written off the analogue world. I put the two together.
What that gets you is someone who speaks your language and connects the two realms instead of making you pick one.
And what qualifies me to talk to you about AI? Thirty years of shaping digital transformation. But where new digital business models and, recently, AI are concerned, you double down or you fall behind. So I went back to school — twice in eighteen months, while running the practice.
The oldest line in that list turned out to have the longest reach. I studied Japanese business language at the WU in Vienna in 1994; in 2022 I took a Japanese manufacturer into the German market.
Outside the practice: three Ironman finishes, a lifelong jazz habit, an SKS coastal skipper licence, and a PADI Rescue Diver brevet I hope never to need.
2026MBAI® Master Business with AI
Hochschule Fresenius
Hochschule Fresenius
2026Scrum certification
Scrum.org
Scrum.org
2025MBA Brand Marketing
Brand University Hamburg
Brand University Hamburg
2001eBusiness
Donau-Universität Krems
Donau-Universität Krems
1994Commerce
(International Business Administration) · Japanese Business Language
Vienna University of Economics and Business
(International Business Administration) · Japanese Business Language
Vienna University of Economics and Business
If one session isn't the end of it
There is exactly one other thing I sell.
Some clients start with a single session, go home happy, then bury the initiative. Fine. Most ask for more. When they do, we find an arrangement that fits. If you want an idea of what that looks like, here is one.
€2,000 per month
Three sessions — that's €667 a session against €800 one-off, with the thinking in between on top: email, voice notes, whatever's quickest. Month to month, cancel whenever, and this is the top of the ladder.
One published price and we start. Pricing is deliberately published so the first conversation can be about your business — not about mine.
Questions
Straight answers — including the ones that cost me the work.
On the format, the approach, and how this differs from consulting.
F1 How is this different from hiring a consultancy?
You get me. One person who has done this before, for ninety minutes, building the thing with you — and only me, unless we later decide together to scale it up. A consultancy sends a team, a deck and a methodology, and implements it on you. If you need forty slides for the supervisory board, buy them somewhere cheaper.
F2 Why do some of your cases reach back ten years or more?
Because the pattern is timeless while the technology is not. I'd rather show you nine decisions that led to successful transformations than one AI pilot. If you've watched cutting-edge services appear and disappear for a while, you may appreciate someone who has been around long enough to offer continuity. The cases are my proof of it.
F3 Your case list jumps from 2017 to 2022. What happened in between?
I was running a business instead of advising one — managing director of a boutique agency here in Hamburg, then COO at a Berlin fintech, with freelance work either side. It may look like the least presentable part of the timeline, and it is probably the most useful: I've sat on the side of the table where you have to live with the advice, make the payroll, and explain the decision to people who didn't get a vote. That changes how you give advice.
F4 Do I need to know what I want to do with AI first?
No, not as a prerequisite. It helps if you have an idea, or a feeling for where you want to take this. But it's enough that you can name one task that annoys you. Translating it into something technical is my job.
F5 Do we need to have bought software already?
No. We work with tools you can use immediately, with no IT project attached. If something ought to be bought afterwards I'll tell you — and I earn nothing on it.
F6 Does this actually work remotely?
Yes, if the format suits you. Screen sharing has real advantages over sitting side by side: you drive your own machine the whole time, and you end up recording your own video tutorial while you do it. In and around Hamburg I can easily come to you, and elsewhere too once we've sorted out the travel.
F7 What happens to our data?
In the ninety minutes we work with real but non-critical material. Personal or confidential data stays out until the ground rules are settled. My technical and organisational measures are documented and public — the document itself is in German.
F8 And afterwards?
You decide. Most people take the result and run with it, some come back, and both are fine. No follow-on booking, no subscription you didn't ask for. In my experience a good first conversation is rarely the last one — but test that yourself rather than taking my word for it.
The simplest next step is one session.
Ninety minutes, €800 plus VAT, remote or in person. In and around Hamburg that's straightforward and usually quick to arrange; anywhere else I'm glad to travel once we've worked out the details.
And the result has to be worth it: worth it, or it's on me.
Or just write and tell me what's pressing hardest: hallo@robertdaniel.consulting