Systems · Software · Strategy
A San Francisco consulting practice. We decide with you what to build and what to buy, run the program, and measure whether the AI assistants your buyers ask can find you. Our recommendations come from systems we build and run ourselves, in production, with results we publish.
Veteran-Owned · PMP-Certified Leadership · Founded 2022
Work
SMTRY is a San Francisco software company building for data sovereignty, and it is the firm's deepest engagement. We designed the company, built its brand, and ship and operate its products in production. Most consultancies show slides about work like this. Ours is public, and you can visit it.
A persistent, encrypted memory that follows you across the AI tools you already use. Taken from architecture to paying customers: per-user encryption, a published benchmark protocol, a SOC 2 aligned readiness program, and production monitoring. The benchmarks are public because evidence beats promises.
Before its San Francisco chapter, the firm served Oregon organizations: go-to-market research, brand guidelines and marketing strategy, and a membership sustainment program built on recurring giving, each carried from assessment through implementation.
Services
J. I. Ashley Consulting takes a small number of engagements where the fit is right. We take a small number of engagements: deciding what to build and what to buy, delivering the program once it is decided, and measuring where you stand with the AI assistants your buyers ask. Software to build goes to SMTRY Applied, and we make the introduction.
Custom systems, AI integration, and memory infrastructure are built by SMTRY, the product company this firm founded. Engagements run through SMTRY Applied; we make the introduction and stay on the strategy side.
Design and build, then the labyrinth nobody warns you about: domains, DNS, email routing, hosting, security, and the search and business consoles that decide whether you get found. We run this stack daily for our own properties. This site is the working sample.
What to build, what to buy, and what to ignore. Grounded in running production AI systems daily, not in slideware.
Program delivery, analytical process design, and decision frameworks from someone who has run them at enterprise scale and under pressure.
Positioning, brand guidelines, and go-to-market strategy, carried into execution: campaigns, content, and social channels planned and managed day to day, with results measured against goals set up front.
Buyers now ask ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Claude who to hire before they ever open Google. We audit where you stand in those answers, fix the entity and structured-data gaps that keep you out of them, and track your share of voice so results are measured instead of promised. The measuring is done by Phaneia, the visibility agent we built for the job. Engagements start with a fixed-price audit, not a retainer.
The $2,500 auditHow engagements work
Thirty minutes on your problem, no charge and no deck. If the fit is wrong, we say so and point you somewhere better.
Most engagements start with a fixed-price assessment rather than a retainer. You see the deliverable, the price, and how results will be measured before you commit.
Everything we build belongs to you: the code, the documentation, the decision record. No lock-in, no dependencies on us that you did not choose.
Contact
For engagements, partnership inquiries, or anything else:
