Engrain the exceptional

I work with a small number of founders to capture what makes their company special, then build a foundation that scales it: an AI operating core designed around the exceptional people who make the business what it is.

01 The argument

Don’t throw average at exceptional. Make exceptional repeatable.

Focus on what makes your company great and the patterns show up. Those patterns are what take AI from average employee to growth catalyst.

  1. Hype comes and goes

    AI is here to stay. That much is certain. But we are at the peak of a hype cycle and most experiments will fail. The answer is not to sit it out. It is to place well-aimed bets on the patterns that actually carry weight.

  2. Models commoditize

    Models are capable and no winner has emerged. Competitive pressure is putting price pressure on every provider, and each model still has its own strengths and blind spots. Better to stay flexible than to build your company on one of them.

  3. The harness captures the value

    Staying independent means capturing what makes you successful yourself, rather than handing it to a model provider for free. Your business, your people, the judgment behind the way you win. Capture that, and any model can build on it.

02 Be the exception

Five in a hundred.

Every square is one enterprise GenAI pilot. Five moved a number a CFO recognizes. The whole job is being one of them.

95 no measurable P&L impact 5 moved the number

MIT NANDA, The GenAI Divide: State of AI in Business, 2025.

03 The engagement

No two of these look the same.

Your company is like no other, and the entire point of the engagement is finding out why. A pre-made plan cannot do that. What I bring is a set of building blocks that surface the patterns underneath.

Building blockWhat it is
Founder strategy Deep-dive sessions, one to one. Where the company is going over the next three years, which levers actually move it, what is working, and what is quietly in the way.
On-site immersion Time with your team. Interviews, shadowing, sitting in on the work. What a day really looks like, what drains them, and what they do that nobody else could.
Design-thinking workshops Designing the workflows, agents and tools with the people who will use them. They already know where their capacity goes and where their judgment is worth the most.
Judgment mapping Writing down the decisions that currently live in people’s heads: what can run alone, what gets flagged, what always reaches a person. This is the part that makes the system yours instead of generic.

By the end we both know what actually creates value in your company, and you have a system that scales it rather than averaging it away.

04 Proven patterns

I breathe AI every day.

You want someone with skin in the game. I have been through this process more than once.

Soulfoundry. A one-person firm where the work that would normally sit with a department runs on a harness I built. The one-person AI company is my proof of concept for how far this can be pushed, and where it breaks.

InThisTogether.vc. A leading European investment network, connecting US capital with Europe’s strongest tech companies. Its deal flow, diligence and investor onboarding run as one operating system that Soulfoundry built.

What that gets you. Your company benefits from the wins and the failures I have had in the field, actually working with the technology, rather than slides about how it could work.

Who is doing this

Karl Doose in mid-sentence, hands open
Karl Doose · Founder
05 Partnership

I’m not looking for one-off engagements.

I want to work with you because I believe in you and your company. Let’s make it long term, without commitment or fees.

Finding and building a company’s soul tells you more about it than any data room ever will. As I help you grow I am glad to stay on board, whether that is advice, capital or introductions. The partnership we build here is stronger than any consulting one-off will ever be.

Start with what makes you special, not with AI.

AI is the tool that clears the hurdles, cuts the time to value and frees your people for the work that moves the company. But lead with what you are already great at, and use AI to get more out of it.

The first conversation is a conversation, not a scoping call. Tell me about the company.

karl@soulfoundry.eu

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