# Ashley Payne

> Technical co-founder and fractional CTO who starts with the commercial problem and still does the technical work. Founder and CEO of an education business as well as its technical lead, so the commercial consequences of a technical decision are his to answer for. Specialises in AI, SaaS, business systems and automation.

An MCP server exposes this content to AI assistants directly: https://www.ashleypayne.co.uk/mcp

## Services
- [The Leverage Diagnostic](https://www.ashleypayne.co.uk/diagnostic): I find what’s costing you, test the risky assumption, and price the fix. Two weeks, fixed, £7,500. The way into the three below.
- [Build: Hands-on engineering](https://www.ashleypayne.co.uk/build): Bespoke software, SaaS products and internal systems, built and delivered to production.
- [Partner: Technical leadership](https://www.ashleypayne.co.uk/partner): A technical co-founder or fractional CTO to own the technology function: what gets built, in what order, and on what architecture.
- [Consult: Complex technical problems](https://www.ashleypayne.co.uk/consult): Architecture reviews, AI strategy and technical advisory for difficult or high-value decisions.
- [AI implementation](https://www.ashleypayne.co.uk/ai-implementation): AI and automation taken from the commercial question to a system in production, including the answer that a model is the wrong tool.
- [Technical due diligence](https://www.ashleypayne.co.uk/technical-due-diligence): An independent read of a codebase, a team or an acquisition target, written for the person who has to decide.
- [Software audit](https://www.ashleypayne.co.uk/software-audit): An audit of the software, automations and AI tools a business already runs: what exists, what it costs, who owns it, and what to keep, fix, merge or build.

## Selected work
- [UK coding education business](https://www.ashleypayne.co.uk/case-coding-education): Co-Founder & CEO. I co-founded this business and I run it at CEO level. The explanation was sitting in thousands of recorded sales calls and onboarding notes. Parents talk about their children on those calls, so none of it goes to a third-party API. Listening to them by hand was never going to happen, so we built something that could.
- [IT asset disposal business](https://www.ashleypayne.co.uk/case-it-asset-disposal): Platform architecture, AI & automation. In a pitch, a prospect asked how he’d know a drive had been wiped. I answered it. IT asset disposal touches a warehouse bench, a corporate client’s compliance team and a wholesale buyer. They need different interfaces over the same record.
- [Confidential client](https://www.ashleypayne.co.uk/case-confidential-saas): Technical Co-Founder. I came into this as technical co-founder. Thousands of records were being posted as ordinary sentences in chat, and nobody could say what they added up to. People were acting on the totals anyway. Then it had to price outcomes better than the tool the market already trusted.

## Insights
- [I let buyers question my business from their own AI. Here's what broke.](https://www.ashleypayne.co.uk/insight-letting-buyers-question-my-business-from-their-ai): Anyone using Claude can ask my business whether I'm worth a call, through a small server I run. The fit check turned away my ideal client before I stopped letting wording decide.
- [Who owns the app your finance team built with Claude?](https://www.ashleypayne.co.uk/insight-who-owns-the-software-your-staff-built): Staff can build a working tool in an afternoon now. Eight questions that tell you whether anyone still knows what the business runs on.
- [How technical due diligence works, from the first call to the report](https://www.ashleypayne.co.uk/insight-how-technical-due-diligence-works): What gets looked at, what access it needs, how long it takes and what slows it down. Written for the investor with a deadline and the founder on the other side of it.
- [Fractional CTO or interim CTO: two jobs that share a title](https://www.ashleypayne.co.uk/insight-fractional-cto-vs-interim-cto): One is a day or two a week for as long as it's useful. The other is a full-time seat with an end date. Which you need depends on whether the chair is empty or the decisions are.
- [How to assess a software agency when you cannot read the code](https://www.ashleypayne.co.uk/insight-how-to-assess-a-software-agency): You are paying an agency or an outsourced team and you cannot tell whether the work is good. Eight checks a non-technical founder can run this week, none of which needs the code.
- [Running AI locally when the data cannot leave](https://www.ashleypayne.co.uk/insight-running-ai-locally-when-data-cannot-leave): A refused cloud AI request is a constraint on one stage of the pipeline, not the end of the project. How I run private AI in my own business, and how to work out what yours needs.
- [What belongs in a technical due diligence report](https://www.ashleypayne.co.uk/insight-what-belongs-in-a-technical-due-diligence-report): A technical due diligence report is for the person signing. What the first page has to say, the seven questions behind it, how a finding should read, and what to distrust in a report you've been handed.
- [Why an AI pilot stalls before production](https://www.ashleypayne.co.uk/insight-why-ai-pilots-stall-before-production): The pilot worked and nothing shipped. Five reasons that happens, all of them visible before the pilot started, and what to agree on day one so yours is not the next.
- [When a database query beats a language model](https://www.ashleypayne.co.uk/insight-when-a-database-query-beats-an-llm): Which customers are about to leave is a query, and somebody could write it this week. How to tell a reporting gap from an AI project.
- [AI consultant or fractional CTO: which one does the problem need?](https://www.ashleypayne.co.uk/insight-ai-consultant-vs-fractional-cto): One is hired for a technology and the other for a business. How to tell which you are short of, and what it costs to hire the wrong one.
- [What a fractional CTO actually costs in the UK](https://www.ashleypayne.co.uk/insight-what-a-fractional-cto-costs-uk): Day rates, retainers and what the money buys, with the sources named and my own rate card on the page.
- [Technical co-founder or fractional CTO, and how to tell which you need](https://www.ashleypayne.co.uk/insight-technical-co-founder-vs-fractional-cto): They do almost the same work. What differs is what you pay with, how long it lasts, and who carries the risk if it goes wrong.
- [Where AI automation pays, and where it does not](https://www.ashleypayne.co.uk/insight-where-ai-automation-actually-pays): The test I use for whether AI will pay, the shapes of work where the economics change, and why picking the right technique matters more than picking the model.
- [When should a founder hire a CTO?](https://www.ashleypayne.co.uk/insight-when-should-a-founder-hire-a-cto): Later than most founders expect, and earlier than they'd like. Five signals that the technical decisions have outgrown the person currently making them.

## Engagement
- The Leverage Diagnostic: Two weeks, fixed, £7,500. Priced as its own piece of work, not as a deposit against a build. One of two proof tracks is agreed on the first call and owed either way. Worked illustration: https://www.ashleypayne.co.uk/sample-diagnostic
- Day rate: £1,000.
- Retainer: £2,000 a month for a support retainer of two days a month, £4,000 a month for a day a week, £7,500 a month for two. None. It runs month to month. 30 days' notice.
- As needed: Support as and when, at the day rate, booked in half days and invoiced for what is used. Nothing is reserved and there is no reply promise.
- Build: Quoted once there is a specification to quote against, which is either what the diagnostic produces or a brief you already have. Six to twelve weeks is the usual shape. A free quote needs a brief with all four of: what done looks like, including how fast, how available and how secure it has to be, and what is deliberately out of scope; representative data with its shape, its volumes and the awkward cases, or the interface contracts that carry the same detail; where the code lives now, what it integrates with, how it gets deployed, what has to be migrated, and any regulatory constraints; one named person who can settle an open question inside an agreed time.
- All prices exclude VAT.
- Partnership on equity: happens, is not sold, and only after a fee.

## Contact
- [Contact](https://www.ashleypayne.co.uk/contact): ashley@ashleypayne.co.uk