Exec-Level AI Consulting & Building · Founder-Led Companies

Put AI to work in your business — on the problems actually worth solving.

Bring me the questions you’re already asking: Where do we start? What should we buy? What should we build? Do we need to hire for this? I’m Murray Arenson, a longtime operating executive and systems builder; AI expanded what I can build. I turn those questions into a ranked plan and working solutions.

Free and confidential. You’ll get a written evaluation before you’re asked to commit to anything.
Murray Arenson at his desk, writing in a notebook beside a laptop
Murray Arenson · Founder & Principal
15 years
Wall Street Journal–ranked equity analyst
11 years
COO/CFO of an award-winning craft whiskey producer
Dozens
of purpose-built business systems; several replaced paid SaaS
1 AI platform
turns hours of government video into published analysis and scoring. In production, with paying subscribers

If you want to keep up with the AI market the way I do, the Pro Pluribus AI Market Atlas is public. I track 158 companies and products across 10 segments, updated regularly. In the last update alone, 20 were added, 65 changed and 1 disappeared.

See the AI Atlas →
WSI Certified AI Consultancy A WSI Certified AI Consultancy Specialist suppliers, purpose-built tools, and delivery capacity behind every engagement. I bring in what the work needs and stay hands-on throughout.
01 / Start here

Start wherever you are.

Companies come to AI from different places. None of them is the wrong place to begin.

Exploring AI

You know AI should be doing something for you. You’re not sure what.

That’s the right instinct, and the wrong place to buy tools. Start with a conversation; a free evaluation follows, showing where AI can create real value in your business, and where it won’t.

Start the conversation →
Struggling to build traction with AI

People are trying things, and none of it adds up.

A pilot that impressed in the demo and died in the workflow, or a dozen private experiments nobody can see: output no one quite trusts, licenses no one quite uses. Scattered effort is a system-design problem, not a model problem, and it’s fixable. I run the checks and guardrails in my own production AI system every day.

Get it unstuck →
Looking to hire for AI

Before you commit a six-figure salary to a role you can’t yet scope. Rent the executive.

I define the role, deliver the first wins, and write the job description your eventual hire actually needs. If it turns out you don’t need the hire, that’s cheaper to learn in month two than year two.

Talk before you post the req →
02 / Where it goes

Be targeted or be comprehensive.

Most companies start with their people, then a workflow or two, then the connections between them. You decide how far it goes; whatever the scope, the standard is the same, and the test is whether it is still working in six months. Part of my job is telling you which problems aren’t worth solving.

Start hereLearning

Make your team smarter about AI, in their own workflows rather than in generic demos, from short working sessions to full programs. It is the easiest place to begin, it fits almost every business, and it surfaces where AI actually belongs in yours.

Level 1Information

See the business and the market clearly, before anything changes. Reporting that arrives in time to matter, operating visibility in one place, customer feedback synthesized. Low risk by nature: it sharpens decisions without changing how the work is done.

Level 2Tasks

Target the workflows that cost you most. Reconciliation and close, data moved by hand between systems, campaign and follow-up work, the report that eats half of someone’s Monday. One at a time, each one scoped and measured.

Level 3Systems

Tie the operation together. End-to-end processes reworked, AI built into the systems you run on, new offerings where the numbers support them. This is where the pieces stop being projects and start being how the business works.

Each level applies across four parts of the business: product and service, go-to-market, operations, and finance. Take a single cell, take a row, or take the whole map. That is how an engagement decides what to do first, and what to leave alone. See the full framework →

03 / Proof

It works.

I’ve been building business systems since long before anyone called them AI.

Distillery 291
Problem

A founder-led craft whiskey producer with data sprawled across systems, workflows held together by effort, and SaaS that fit 80% of the need.

What I did

Eleven years as COO/CFO, building the operating systems along the way: CRM, inventory, shipping, cash, daily reporting. Each at the smallest tool that solved the problem.

Result

A company operable beyond the founder’s bandwidth, with several paid subscriptions replaced by purpose-built tools.

CouncilWatch (CivixIQ)
Problem

Government meetings are public but practically opaque: hours of video, dense agendas, votes nobody tracks.

What I did

Built an AI system that turns the raw record into published analysis and scoring, with the checks and testing that make its output trustworthy enough to sell.

Result

100+ meetings analyzed across two governments. A multi-year scored dataset. Paying subscribers. Run by one operator.

Also on the record: CFO of a Denver entrepreneurship ecosystem · President of the Denver chapter of Keiretsu Forum, the world’s largest angel investor network · mentor and advisor to early-stage companies, from organic wine (Wander + Ivy) to enterprise analytics (PieAX).

04 / AI from an operator’s perspective
AI should start with the business, not the technology: where work gets stuck, where hours vanish without creating value, where better information would change a decision, where it might even change what you sell. Most companies start with the impressive demo instead. The practical wins usually come first: automate the work between the judgments, and be deliberate about which judgments you hand over.

I’ve built systems both ways: around a person running the process, and around AI running it. Knowing the difference is most of the job.

05 / How it starts

Start with a conversation.

No pressure and no pitch deck, a practical conversation about where you stand and what’s worth doing. Everything after it is earned, one step at a time, and you’ll get a written evaluation before you’re asked to commit to anything.

How it works
  • A thirty-minute conversation — free and confidential
  • A free preliminary evaluation — a short written look at where AI can create value in your operation, where it won’t, and what I’d recommend doing first
  • A proposal, if it makes sense — what the work would cover
  • The engagement — a full roadmap with your strongest opportunities ranked and honest build, buy, or skip calls, then build, integrate, optimize, and scale
Book a 30-minute conversation Free. Confidential. No commitment required.

What to bring

Whatever you’re working on: a stalled pilot, a role you’re about to post, a process nobody can explain, a subscription you resent paying for. Straight answers, no homework.

Book a conversation →