A free audit, an honest plan, a build partner if you want one.

One hour with you, same-day market research, and you have the decision tree in hand: which AI tools to adopt this week, when a custom build is worth it, when it isn’t. No sales pitch — just engineers telling you what works.

Live · audit scoring
Opportunity matrix · feasibility × ROIaudit #042
10 opportunities scored4 quick · 2 strategic · 4 skip
20+SMEs audited
Free1-hour deep dive
24 hraudit turnaround
The problem

Why most AI consultants are useless.

Most AI consultants recommend the tool they get a kickback for, the consulting framework from their last enterprise gig, or the AI they read about on LinkedIn last week. None of them have actually shipped AI in production. We have. So when we say "this opportunity is high ROI" or "this one is a waste," it comes from having built it the wrong way before. The audit is free because the build is where we make our money — and you should pick us only if the audit proves we should.

Consultant audit · post-mortem3 anti-patterns
01 · Fail·VENDOR_KICKBACK
CRIT

4 of 4 recommended vendors had referral fees paid back to the consultant.

referral rate:100%·big-firm audit
02 · Fail·DECK_NO_PLAN
WARN

142-slide deliverable with zero named owners and zero fixed-price budgets.

slides · owners:142 · 0·$15K engagement
03 · Fail·UNTESTED_THEORY
WARN

Recommendations sourced from analyst reports; consultant has never shipped AI in production.

shipped in prod:0·pure consulting
What we ship

Four shapes, one engineering team.

01

Workflow audit

We watch your team do their work and identify the 3–5 highest-leverage AI opportunities.

02

Opportunity scoring

Each opportunity scored by feasibility, ROI, build cost, and time-to-value.

BI
03

"Use today" tool picks

Vetted SaaS, no-code, and AI tools you can adopt this week — with vendor names, pricing, and integration notes. Plus the ones to skip.

306090
04

30/60/90 roadmap

Named owners, fixed-price budgets, weekly deliverables. The opposite of a consultant deck.

See case study
Why Zaibex

Side-by-side with a typical agency.

We don’t outbid the cheap shops, and we don’t pretend to be McKinsey. Here’s where the real practical difference lives.

Typical agency
Zaibex
$5K–$15K audit fee · 2–3 weeks
Free · 24-hour turnaround
Consultants who’ve never shipped
Engineers who shipped 6 AI products
Generic AI maturity framework
Workflow-specific opportunity scoring
Vendor kickbacks influence picks
Vendor-neutral, we earn money on the build
Big slide deck, no execution plan
Roadmap with named owners + budgets
Hands off after the deck
Optional build partner if we’re the right fit
The stack

The exact tools and why we chose them.

No mystery stack, no platform lock-in. You see what we use, you read why, and you own the keys on day one.

01 · Audit method
Workflow observation + interviews

We watch your team work. That’s where the real opportunities live.

02 · Opportunity scoring
ROI · Feasibility · TTV matrix

Every opportunity scored on three axes, comparable across.

03 · Vendor selection
Vendor-neutral evaluation

We don’t take kickbacks. We recommend what we’d use, period.

04 · Architecture review
Senior engineer review

If you already have AI in production, we review the codebase and tell you what’s bleeding.

05 · Roadmap
30/60/90 with budgets

Named owners. Fixed-price phases. Weekly deliverables. Real plan, not a slide.

06 · Build partner option
Senior-engineer-led delivery

If we’re the right fit, we build it. If we’re not, we tell you who is.

The process

Discover · Architect · Build · Ship.

Four stages, named timelines, named deliverables. No open-ended discovery. No moving goalposts.

01·1 hour

Discovery call

Free call. We listen, you talk. We map your workflow, your existing tools, and what you’ve already tried that didn’t stick.

  • Workflow snapshot
  • Current-tool inventory
  • Pain map
02·Same day

Market research

Right after the call. We scan the SaaS, no-code, and AI tools in the market and shortlist what actually fits your workflow — the "use today" candidates, before we ask whether a custom build is justified.

  • Vetted tool shortlist
  • Capability matrix
  • Vendor pricing
03·Same day

Audit report

Delivered the same day as the research. The decision tree: which tools to adopt this week, which need a custom build (agent, RAG, full-stack app), which to skip. With named owners, fixed-price budgets, and a 30/60/90 plan.

  • "Use today" tool picks
  • Custom-build decisions
  • 30/60/90 roadmap
04·Next day · 1 hour

Walkthrough

Within 24 hours of the discovery call. We walk you through the report and tell you honestly whether we’re the right build partner — or whether off-the-shelf tools cover you and you don’t need one.

  • Live walkthrough
  • Q&A
  • Honest recommendation
In production

Real numbers, named client.

20+SMEs audited and roadmapped
Audit → Build · Legal AI platform
Read the full case study
The problem

A legal-tech founder was choosing between off-the-shelf AI tools and a custom-built RAG platform. The audit needed to identify whether a custom build was justified.

Our approach

We audited the workflow, scored the off-the-shelf and custom options on ROI / feasibility / time-to-value, and recommended custom build for citation enforcement and domain-specific retrieval.

The outcome

40% faster contract creation after the build. The audit paid for itself by avoiding $20K of wrong-vendor spend.

Pricing & timeline

Fixed price. Fixed scope. Public ranges.

We don’t hide pricing behind a sales call. Pick the tier that matches your stage. The discovery call confirms scope, not budget.

Discovery Audit
Most popular
Free
1 week
  • 1-hour deep-dive call with your team
  • Workflow audit + AI opportunity scoring
  • Build-vs-buy recommendations
  • 30/60/90 roadmap with budgets and owners
  • 1-hour walkthrough of the plan
Implementation Partnership
Let's talk
Tailored to scope
  • Optional follow-on engagement to build what we recommend
  • Fixed-price per phase from the audit
  • Senior engineer-led
  • On-call, eval-first, production-grade
Honest answers

The questions we actually hear on calls.

Why is the audit free?

Because most AI audits are upsell decks. We make our money on the build, so we audit honestly and only earn the build if we’re the right fit. If we’re not, the audit is still yours.

What if we want the audit but not the build?

That’s the whole point. About a third of our audits end in "use this off-the-shelf tool, don’t hire us." That’s a successful audit too.

How is this different from McKinsey or Accenture?

We’ve shipped AI in production. They’ve shipped slides. The audit is structurally different — we recommend specific tools, specific architectures, specific named engineers.

Do you take kickbacks from vendors?

No. We use Claude, OpenAI, Vapi, n8n, ElevenLabs, Postgres — and we’d recommend them whether or not you used us. No referral fees.

What if we already have AI in production?

We do code reviews. About half our audits are "here’s what’s wrong with what you have" rather than "here’s what to build."

What size company is this for?

Founder-led businesses, SMEs, and ops teams at $2M–$50M revenue. Below that, the audit is overkill. Above that, you need a slower, more rigorous engagement.

Ready when you are

The best audit is the one that tells you to spend money on something other than the consultant. We do that often — because we know what works and what doesn’t, and the answer isn’t always "hire us." Book a free hour. We’ll tell you straight.