Founder Engine

People

Policy

Process

Legacy tech

Why the value's stuck

Your company has an immune system. And it's rejecting change.

It's the people, some pushing, some quietly fearful. The policies, some that protect you and some written for a company you've outgrown. The process layered up over years. The legacy tech nobody wants to touch. On its own, none of it is the enemy.

Together it behaves like an immune system. Anything new gets surrounded, slowed and rejected before it can take hold. That's why the AI you bought is sitting idle. We break the loop from the inside, with your team, until the new way is the one the system stops fighting.

Lockheed's Skunk Works built America's first jet, the XP-80, in 143 days. 1943-44.

The Growth Skunkworks

Lockheed had this exact problem in 1943.

America needed a jet fighter, fast. Lockheed knew its own factory, its tooling and its sign-offs could never move at that pace. So Kelly Johnson took a small team, set them up in a rented tent on the side of the lot, and freed them from the usual process. They built the XP-80 in 143 days. They called it the Skunk Works.

Your business has the same problem with AI. Your systems, process and people, the immune system, can't move at the pace AI demands. So we do what Lockheed did: a nimble growth team spun out from inside your own organisation, off to the side, free to embrace AI fully, with expert advisors at their shoulder. Business as usual carries on. The experiments run alongside it, a few plug lightly into tools you already use, and only the proven winners get folded back in.

Business as usual

Growth Skunkworks

What the 90 days actually look like

We don't advise from the sidelines. We build it with your team.

We create the skills

We build reusable AI skills for the jobs your team does every week, so work that used to eat hours runs in minutes, in your voice and to your standard.

We automate the busywork

We take the repetitive, manual work off your team's plate and automate it, so their time goes on the work that actually grows the business.

We run the growth experiments

Fast, focused experiments on your real growth levers, run alongside business as usual. We kill what fails, tune what's promising, and go all in on what works.

We move the KPIs

Every experiment has an owner, a target and a deadline. We agree the leading metric that matters and move it inside the 90 days, in the open, where you can see it.

Why the usual fixes don't stick

You've tried the usual fixes. None of them leave your team more capable.

The consultant

They arrive, spend two weeks learning 10% of your business, make sweeping recommendations, then leave. Three months later you find they broke a dependency between sales and operations that nobody told them about.

We don't parachute in and leave. The Founder Engine team embeds with yours and builds it together, so the knowledge stays in the building.

The VA with ChatGPT

You hand a virtual assistant access to AI. They generate content that sounds like everyone else's. Your brand voice disappears, and your audience can smell the slop a mile off.

We train your people to use AI in your voice, on your real work, not generic output nobody asked for.

Going it alone

You're CEO, CMO, CTO, COO and CFO. Every decision bottlenecks through one person. When you're ill or away, the business stalls and nobody else has the full picture.

We build engines your team runs without you, so the business stops depending on a single head holding all the context.

We don't sell you software, and we don't send a consultant who vanishes. The Founder Engine team works alongside yours for 90 days, and the capability stays when we go.

The honest maths on agencies

You don't need another agency. You need your team to own the work.

Agencies are full of good people. But you rent their expertise by the month, and your team never learns it. We give your team the tools and the training, so the capability stays in your building after we've gone.

Renting it

What agencies charge to do it for you

Media buying / paid adsfrom £4,000/mo

PR & communications£3,000 to £5,000/mo

SEO agency£2,000 to £5,000/mo

Social media agency£2,500 to £4,000/mo

Content marketing£3,000 to £6,000/mo

Email & CRM£2,500 to £4,000/mo

Take on two or three of these and you are past £10,000 a month. Every month. Stop paying and it all stops, and your team owns none of it.

Owning it

The right tools, your team trained to run them

The AI tools your team needs, a fraction of one agency retainer.
A one-off 90-day Skunkworks that trains your people to run it themselves.
You pay once. The skill stays in the team. The retainers stop.
When the work changes, your team adapts it. No new brief, no new invoice.

Buy the tools once. Train the team once. Delete the retainers for good.

Figures are typical UK mid-market agency retainers (service fees, before media and ad spend). Sources: UK agency pricing guides, 2025/26.

Who's behind Founder Engine

I'm a founder who got tired of watching AI sit idle.

I'm Ruari Fairbairns. I've spent thirty years building businesses, seven of them, and the last few years building AI engines myself, by hand, to find out what they can really do.

Here is what I found. The tools are extraordinary, and almost nobody uses them properly. You buy the subscriptions, the team pokes at them for a week, and the value sits there untouched, while you keep paying agencies thousands a month for work your own people could own.

Founder Engine is what I would want if I were you. A small expert team that comes in, builds AI into your business with your people, moves a real number in ninety days, and leaves the capability behind. No jargon, no dependency, no retainer you cannot leave.

Ruari Fairbairns, Founder

Straight pricing, no games

£5,000 a month. Three months. Then your team carries it.

One flat price for the full 90-day Growth Skunkworks. No setup fees, no surprises, no rolling retainer you can't get out of.

£5,000 / month

Three months. £15,000 in total.

If you are paying agencies, you are likely spending more than this every month, with no end date. This is £5,000 a month for ninety days. Then your team carries it for nothing.

A nimble growth team spun off alongside your business for 90 days
Reusable AI skills and automations built for your team to keep
Rapid GTM growth experiments on your real levers
Expert practitioners at your team's shoulder throughout
Your people trained to run it all after we've gone

We agree the one number that matters before we start. If we have not moved it by day ninety, we keep working for free until we do. You carry no risk.

Book a conversation →

We take ten businesses per cohort, so we stay hands-on with every one.

What happens after you book

A short call to see if we are a fit. No pitch.

We map your growth levers together and agree the metrics to move.

You join the next cohort and we get to work.