Intro

We offer one flagship service: an ongoing advisory relationship that sits alongside your leadership as a translator between technical and business people, and as a buffer between you and your technology suppliers. A short list of bounded, fixed-price diagnostic reviews sits underneath it, for a need that’s a single piece of work rather than an ongoing relationship.

Why the incentives are different

Most consulting businesses need you to buy more: more hours, more scope, more of whatever else they happen to sell. We structurally can’t. The Guild has no shareholders and no owner taking a profit from what clients pay, so a bigger invoice doesn’t make anyone here richer. Every fee, retainer or one-off, funds Office Hours and community events elsewhere on this site instead.

  • The retainer is a fixed monthly scope, agreed up front. There’s no hourly rate rewarding a job that runs long.
  • Whoever sits with your board doesn’t sell the technology being discussed, so there’s nothing to gain from recommending more of it.
  • Pricing has two tiers because we can afford to charge less to organisations that have less. The full rate is what makes the lower one possible.

Guild Advisory Retainer

Two tiers, each a fixed monthly scope agreed up front. A lower-cost month means a smaller scope, not a smaller amount of the same one.

  • Translator tier A monthly call with your leadership, plus on-call access when something needs translating quickly between you and your technical team or suppliers, and a short written note after each call.

    Example: a founder was about to sign a hosting contract they didn’t fully understand. A same-week call turned the proposal into three plain business questions to put back to the supplier. They negotiated materially better terms before signing.
  • Board Advisor tier Everything in Translator, plus a seat at one board or leadership meeting a month to represent the technology position, a plain-English review of one vendor proposal, contract, or major technical decision a month, and a short quarterly technology summary you can take to your own board or funders.

    Example: a charity’s trustees were shown two competing case-management systems with no way to judge between them. The retainer reviewed both, joined the board meeting to answer questions directly, and the trustees made a confident, minuted decision instead of putting it off another quarter.

See pricing and eligibility

Office Hours

A free, 45 to 60 minute advisory conversation, no strings attached. A capped number of slots each month, open to anyone.

Schedule an Office Hours call

Who this is for

Individual gaming and arts practitioners. Indie game studios and small arts organisations. Charities and community or voluntary groups. Small tech businesses and startups in our existing community. Career changers and international professionals building a portfolio through the Guild.

Who this isn’t for

Mid-market and enterprise organisations. Regulated financial services or healthcare providers. If you’re not a fit, we’ll say so, and point you elsewhere if we can.