For 10–50 person companies
Custom AI development for small businesses.
One automation that removes a real cost, built for a fixed price and live in 4–8 weeks. No enterprise minimums, no retainers, no rented SaaS stack. You own the code.
Mark Austen, Founder — replies within 24 hours
What I build for small businesses
The highest-ROI builds for 10–50 person teams. Most start with one workflow and grow from there.
Customer support AI
A bot on your site or WhatsApp that answers the questions your team types out ten times a day, and hands off to a human when it matters.
Admin automation
Invoice processing, document filing, data entry between the systems that don't talk to each other. The hours that quietly eat your week.
Reconciliation & bookkeeping AI
Bank statements matched to invoices automatically, anomalies flagged, month-end sped up. Connected to your accounting stack.
Lead follow-up agent
Every enquiry answered in seconds, qualified, and chased on a schedule. Small teams lose the most leads to slow follow-up.
Scheduling & intake
Bookings, intake forms, reminders and rescheduling handled end to end, without a receptionist doing calendar tetris.
Reports that write themselves
The weekly numbers pulled from your tools and summarised into one email or dashboard, on schedule, every time.
Why custom beats stacking SaaS subscriptions
Most small businesses solve each problem with another monthly subscription. Here's where one custom build takes over.
Fixed price, not a retainer
One written quote before any work starts. No agency retainer, no per-seat pricing that grows with your team. Fixed price, quoted after a short scoping chat with me.
Owned, not rented
The code lives in your GitHub from day one and runs on infrastructure you control. Cancel nothing, migrate nothing, lose nothing.
Built around your tools
Your accounting package, your calendar, your inbox, your CRM. Custom AI wraps what you already use instead of forcing a migration.
Start with one workflow
You don't need an AI strategy. You need the one automation with the clearest ROI, live in weeks. Everything else can plug into the same foundation later.
Founder-led
You talk to the developer who writes the code. No account managers, no handovers, weekly Friday demos so you always see progress.
A worked example
A power-generation company's finance team was doing bank reconciliation by hand, every day.
I built a reconciliation system connected to their ERP and bank feeds. In their words: "AI Makers built our bank reconciliation system in 3 weeks. It replaced hours of manual data entry every day." That's the small-business pattern: one painful, repetitive workflow, automated properly.
How pricing works
Fixed price, quoted after a short scoping chat with me. See how the quote is built and the typical timeline first.
Further reading: AI assistant cost for small business (2026 numbers) · Custom AI vs off-the-shelf software
Recent projects, real clients
AI-accelerated mobile and web apps: 40% faster development, 30% cost savings.
Warehouse management across 3 islands, with 99.9% inventory accuracy.
Full booking platform with AI tour content and a customer chatbot.
Small businesses FAQ
Is custom AI affordable for a small business?+
Yes, if you scope it right. A focused build (one workflow, a few integrations) replaces SaaS subscriptions you would otherwise pay for every month, and you own it. Fixed price for the agreed scope, quoted after a short scoping chat with me. The written quote spells out what's in and what's out, and you own the code.
Does it matter if you have no IT team?+
No. I host it, or set it up on a simple cloud account you own. I maintain it month to month and hand over documentation a future developer can pick up.
How fast can it be live?+
A single workflow: 3–6 weeks. Something touching several systems: 6–10 weeks. You see a working demo every Friday from week one.
What happens as you grow?+
That's the point of owning it. The same foundation takes more workflows, more users and more integrations without re-platforming. Each addition is cheaper than the first because the plumbing exists.
What should you automate first?+
The task someone does every day that follows the same rules every time: reconciliation, lead follow-up, intake or reporting. On a short scoping chat I'll tell you straight which one has the clearest ROI, and if none does, I'll say that too.
Ready to remove a real cost?
Fixed price, quoted after a short scoping chat with me. Tell me the task that eats your team's week and I'll come back with a written quote within a few days.