Why we're picky about who we recommend, and what that means for you
If you search for AI help for your business right now, you will find a lot of options. Agencies. Consultants. Software platforms. Freelancers. Implementation specialists. People who describe themselves as AI transformation partners. The market has expanded very quickly, and most of the people in it are perfectly sincere.
The problem is not sincerity. The problem is that a significant number of them only know how to do one thing.
The hammer problem
There is an old observation about tools and problems that is especially relevant here: if the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a nail.
A firm that built its entire practice around AI automation will, when you describe your situation to them, find an AI automation problem. This is not necessarily cynical. It can be entirely genuine. But it means the question "is AI actually the right solution here?" is one they are not well placed to answer neutrally, because their business depends on the answer being yes.
This is not an argument against AI agencies. It is an argument for being careful about which ones you talk to, and for making sure the person advising you has some interest in getting the answer right rather than just getting to implementation.
What we look for in a partner
Before we list anyone on this site, we do the obvious checks. We verify that the firm is a real, established business: how long it has been trading, and that it has been filing its accounts and returns. We look at their work and talk to the people who run the firm. We ask for client references and follow them up where they are offered.
But the thing we look for most carefully is whether the firm is, at its core, a software business.
That might sound like a strange criterion, but it matters enormously. A firm with genuine software capability is not locked into a single approach. They can assess what you actually need: whether that is AI, automation, a better website, a CRM that works properly, a workflow that makes sense, or something else entirely, and build whichever of those things is right. They are not fishing for an AI engagement. They are trying to solve a problem, using whatever the right tools are.
What that looks like in practice
The partners we work with are not going to walk into your business and tell you AI is the answer regardless of what you say. Every one of them told us, before we asked, that for some clients the honest answer is "not AI, not yet", and that they would give it. That is the outcome we want. Not because we are indifferent to whether you use AI (we think it has genuine value in the right circumstances) but because the alternative is worse. You spend money on something that was not right for the moment, it produces poor results, and you conclude that AI doesn't work and neither does anyone who recommended it.
A good recommendation that saves you from the wrong solution is worth more to everyone than a referral that produces a bad project.
The checks we run
To give you a clear picture of what due diligence looks like before we list a partner:
- A real business with a track record. We check how long the firm has been trading and that it has been filing its accounts and returns. We are not recommending firms that are one bad month away from closing, or that only exist on a website.
- Evidence of real work. We look at what they have built and who for, we talk to the people who run the firm, and we follow up client references where they are offered.
- Software breadth. We want to understand the full range of what they can build and deliver, not just the AI capability.
- Honest scope. We ask how they would handle a situation where AI turns out not to be the right solution. The answer to that question tells you a lot.
- Ethical practice. We are not listing firms that use pressure sales, lock you into contracts you don't understand, or build things designed to be impossible to leave.
A note on what we don't do
We do not list every agency that approaches us. We have turned down firms that looked fine on paper but whose approach to scoping felt too much like selling first and assessing second. We have declined to list firms that exclusively focus on AI because we could not satisfy ourselves they would recommend against it when that was the right answer.
The list of partners on this site is deliberately small. It will grow, but slowly. We would rather have fewer partners we trust than more that we do not.
What this means for you
If we refer you to someone, it is because we believe they will start by understanding your problem and work outwards from there, rather than starting from a solution and working backwards to your business.
They may tell you that what you need is not AI. They may tell you that AI is right, but not yet: that there is groundwork to do first. They may tell you that the specific thing you asked about is not the right tool, but something adjacent is.
All of those are good outcomes. They are the point.
If you want to understand how we approach the site more broadly (why it exists and how we make money from it), that is explained here.