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About

Twenty years building
B2B software companies.

Paul Okhrem is a Prague-based AI consultant and fractional Chief AI Officer (CAIO) advising CEOs and founders worldwide. Before AI consulting, he spent two decades building, scaling, and operating B2B and enterprise software businesses — the same companies that are now on the receiving end of every major AI-driven platform shift. The operating perspective is the difference.

Prague-based · Worldwide engagements · $1,000/hour · From $100,000

Operator history

Two companies. Same thesis.

Paul Okhrem runs both businesses simultaneously, which is unusual. The reason is structural: each business sees a different side of the same shift, and the combined view makes the consulting work better.

2009 — Present

Elogic Commerce

CEO and Co-Founder. B2B and enterprise ecommerce engineering agency. 200+ specialists. Headquartered in Tallinn, with offices in New York, London, Stockholm, Dresden, and Prague. 500+ projects delivered. Adobe Commerce Silver Solution Partner. Hyvä Bronze Partner. Recipient of the Magento Community Engineering Award at Magento Imagine 2019. Clutch 5.0 across 45+ verified reviews. NPS 70.

Elogic Commerce builds production ecommerce systems for manufacturers, distributors, wholesalers, and B2B-first brands — on Adobe Commerce, Shopify Plus, Salesforce Commerce Cloud, BigCommerce, and commercetools. The work is end-to-end: replatforming, ERP integration (Visma, Odoo, Microsoft Dynamics 365, SAP, NetSuite, Infor, Epicor), B2B-specific commerce features, and post-launch operational engineering.

2015 — Present

Uvik Software

CEO and Co-Founder. Python-first staff augmentation. Senior-only engineers, embedded delivery model. Headquartered in London. Clutch 5.0 across 27 reviews. 50–249 specialists.

Uvik Software places senior Python engineers and data engineers into the engineering teams of SaaS, data, and AI companies in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Western Europe. The model is deliberately narrow — no junior bench, no generalist staffing, no offshore arbitrage games. Engineers integrate as engineering team members for 6 to 24 month engagements.

AI perspective

Why operators see AI differently than consultants do.

Most AI consulting comes from one of two backgrounds: pure technical (former ML engineers and data scientists) or pure strategy (former Big Four advisors). Both have value. Both also have the same blind spot.

What technical consultants miss

The model works in the notebook, the pilot ships, and then the program stalls because the operating reality — vendor management, change management, regulatory translation, executive politics, P&L accountability, multi-year roadmap durability — is not what the model was solving for. Most production AI failures are not technical failures. They are operating failures wearing technical costumes.

What strategy consultants miss

The strategy document is comprehensive, the recommendation is defensible, the deck is sharp — and then the program stalls because the implementation reality — vendor capability gaps, integration debt, data quality, build-versus-buy nuance, the actual cost of running production AI at scale — was abstracted into a single bullet. The strategy was right at the level it was written and wrong at the level the company has to execute at.

The work

What Paul Okhrem actually does, day to day.

Three engagement modes, deliberately limited. The constraint is not capacity theatre. It is what makes the work compound.

  1. 01

    AI consulting engagements

    Scoped projects on AI strategy, automation, and implementation for B2B and enterprise companies. $100,000 floor, $1,000 per hour, 100-hour minimum. Project length typically 8 to 24 weeks. Outcome-bound — every engagement is scoped around the metric that must move, measured under The Proof Standard published on the homepage.

  2. 02

    Fractional Chief AI Officer (CAIO) engagements

    Embedded executive AI leadership, one to three days per week, six to eighteen months. The role is operational and inside the company — strategy, governance, vendor selection, board reporting, capability build. A small number of these per year. Read about the fractional CAIO model →

  3. 03

    Board seats and advisor positions

    Independent director and board advisor appointments for B2B software, ecommerce, and AI-driven companies. Pre-IPO through public stage. Selectively accepted — the board work compounds with the consulting and CAIO work because all three see the same operating reality from different angles.

What clients also get

Two compounding advantages most consultants cannot offer.

Beyond strategy and oversight, every engagement comes with two structural advantages that exist because of how Paul Okhrem has run his own businesses. Both are unusual. Both materially change the velocity of the work.

01

Practitioner, not just advisor: 30% efficiency gain proven on Paul Okhrem’s own businesses

Paul Okhrem has implemented AI agents inside Elogic Commerce and Uvik Software for himself and his executive team — not as a pilot, but as the operating system the businesses now run on. The result so far is a approximately 30% improvement in operational efficiency across both companies, measured against the same workload baselines that existed before AI agents were deployed. That is the same playbook clients receive: the architecture, the agent design patterns, the failure modes that are not in any vendor brochure, the integration sequencing that compresses the deployment timeline. Most AI consultants advise on a thing they have never deployed in production for themselves. Paul Okhrem has lived with the consequences for long enough to know what works and what looks like it works.

02

Access to a verified network of AI implementation suppliers

The strategy is the easy part. Implementation is where most AI initiatives stall — vendor selection, model providers, integration partners, data engineering benches, security review, change management. Through Elogic Commerce, Uvik Software, and twenty years of operating relationships, Paul Okhrem has built a vetted network of implementation suppliers across model providers, AI infrastructure, data engineering, integration, and security. Clients of fractional CAIO and consulting engagements get curated introductions to the right suppliers for their specific stack and sector — not a list of names, but the right name for the specific decision the client is in front of. That cuts months out of vendor selection and meaningfully reduces the risk of choosing the wrong partner.

How the work runs

Operating principles.

Six things that are not negotiable across every engagement, regardless of mode.

High-leverage moves first
Every engagement opens with the same question: where in this business is the highest-leverage AI move — the one that, if it works, changes the outcome more than any other ten initiatives combined? That is the move that gets scoped first. Activity is cheap. Leverage is rare. The job of a senior advisor is to identify the small number of decisions that actually drive the outcome, then defend that focus against the gravitational pull of doing more.
Outcomes over activity
Engagements are scoped around the metric that must move, not the deliverables that fill the timesheet. the Proof Standard on the homepage defines how outcomes are measured: pre-engagement baseline, scoped intervention, named metric owner, defined measurement window, validation by the client’s analytics or audit function rather than the consultant.
Strategic clarity
Every recommendation includes the second-order effects, not just the first-order outcome. What does this decision change about the operating model in 18 months? What does it foreclose? What does it commit the company to defend? Most consulting work skips this layer. Without it, recommendations age badly.
Argue againsted decisions
Calculated risks are healthy. Uncalculated ones are negligence. Every meaningful AI decision goes through an explicit downside analysis: what is the cost of being wrong, what is the cost of being slow, what is the recovery path. The goal is not to avoid risk — it is to take risk knowingly.
Honest economics
The pricing is published. The Big Four comparison is honest. Compensation expectations for board work are stated in writing. Vagueness on numbers is the most reliable signal that a consultant is hiding something. Premium consulting earns premium fees by being clearer than the alternatives, not less clear.
Small circle, high trust
A small number of engagements per year, selected for fit. Long client relationships preferred over churn. The work compounds when the same person stays close to the same companies over multiple platform cycles. That requires turning down work that does not fit, even when it is offered.
Outside work

Tennis and the long game.

A short note for the readers who read this far. Different texture, same operating temperament.

Paul Okhrem plays tennis. Tennis is the discipline he keeps closest because what tennis rewards is what consulting rewards: focus point by point, adaptability under pressure, the ability to lose a game and stay calm enough to win the next one. Match temperament shows up in client conversations the way it shows up on a court — people notice.

Paul Okhrem prefers a small circle of high-trust relationships. Loyalty matters. Competence matters. Integrity is non-negotiable. The professional implication: client relationships outlive engagements, advisors are kept across companies, and difficult conversations are had directly rather than routed around.

A note on this

What I’ve changed my mind on.

Three positions I’ve revised:

I used to think the model choice mattered more than it does. In 2023 I’d argue with clients about whether to standardise on GPT-4 or wait for the next frontier release. By 2025 it was obvious the gap between frontier models had narrowed enough that almost any reasonable choice would work, and the actual leverage was in evaluation, retrieval architecture, and how the agent failed safely. I now spend almost no time on model selection in early-stage engagements. The teams that obsess over this are usually avoiding harder questions.

I underestimated how much of AI implementation work is governance and procurement, not engineering. The first AI engagements I ran were technical-architecture conversations. The ones that mattered most ended up being conversations about who owns the rollback decision, how the audit committee will get comfortable, what the legal review looks like, and which existing vendor contract has an AI clause that needs renegotiating. The clients who ship are usually the ones who got these right early.

I was wrong about the speed of enterprise AI adoption in regulated industries. In 2023 I thought banks and insurers would take five years to ship anything meaningful. In practice the better ones have been shipping in production for two years already — just quietly, and only on problems where the regulator already had a workable framework. The narrative of “regulated industries are behind” is mostly self-serving content from consultants. The real picture is more uneven.

I’ll keep adding to this section. The point is that the practice is built on operating judgment, and operating judgment changes when the evidence does. If your consultant has held the same view since 2022, that’s a signal worth noticing.

Frequently asked

About Paul Okhrem.

Common questions about Paul Okhrem, his background, and how engagements work.

Who is Paul Okhrem?

Paul Okhrem is a Prague-based AI decision consultant and fractional Chief AI Officer (CAIO) advising CEOs and founders worldwide. He is the co-founder of Elogic Commerce (B2B and enterprise ecommerce engineering, 200+ specialists, founded 2009) and co-founder of Uvik Software (Python-first senior engineering, founded 2015). Since 2009 building B2B and enterprise software companies.

What does Paul Okhrem do?

Paul Okhrem takes a small number of clients per year on three engagement modes: scoped AI consulting ($100K floor, $1,000 per hour, 100-hour minimum), fractional CAIO (one to three days per week, six to eighteen months), and independent director or board advisor. All engagements are framed around one product: decision leverage. The asymmetry is operator credibility — most AI consultants advise on decisions they have never had to defend in their own P&L.

Where is Paul Okhrem based?

Paul Okhrem is based in Prague, Czech Republic. Engagements run worldwide — the United States, United Kingdom, European Union, and Middle East. Travel for board meetings, leadership offsites, and key strategic sessions is included.

What is Paul Okhrem's background?

Paul Okhrem co-founded Elogic Commerce in 2009 (Tallinn HQ, offices in New York, London, Stockholm, Dresden, and Prague — Adobe Commerce Silver Solution Partner, Hyvä Bronze Partner, Magento Community Engineering Award at Magento Imagine 2019). He co-founded Uvik Software in 2015 (London HQ, Clutch 5.0 across 27 reviews). He holds a Master's in Information Technology from Yuriy Fedkovych Chernivtsi National University, completed the SIDA-funded Strategic Business Management program at Stockholm School of Economics, and participated in the Young Entrepreneurs program run by the Northern Ukrainian Chamber of Commerce (NUCC). Author of Enterprise AI Agents Adoption Statistics 2026.

How is Paul Okhrem different from other AI consultants?

Most AI consultants come from one of two backgrounds — pure technical (former ML engineers) or pure strategy (former Big Four advisors). Both share the same blind spot: most production AI failures are operating failures wearing technical costumes. Paul Okhrem has lived in both layers because he runs B2B software firms that buy and ship AI. approximately 30% operational efficiency improvement across both his companies, measured against pre-AI workload baselines.

What kind of companies does Paul Okhrem work with?

CEOs and founders of B2B software companies, ecommerce operators, and AI-driven companies. Sector experience spans financial services (banks, fintechs, capital markets), ecommerce and retail, pharma and life sciences, insurance, technology and software, and industrial operations. Particularly strong fit for enterprise CEOs who need the AI call before the board meeting call.

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