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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.

Discuss an engagement Fractional CAIO

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

Operator history

Two companies. Same thesis.

Paul 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 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 Solution Partner. Hyvä Bronze Partner. Recipient of the Magento Community Engineering Award at Adobe Imagine 2019. Clutch 5.0 across 45+ verified reviews. NPS 70.

Elogic 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 Founder. Python-first staff augmentation. Senior-only engineers, embedded delivery model. Headquartered in Tallinn with a UK commercial office. Clutch 5.0 across 27 reviews. 50–249 specialists.

Uvik 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.

The combination matters: Elogic sees how enterprise B2B companies actually buy, deploy, and operate platform technology. Uvik sees how SaaS, data, and AI teams actually build it. The same person sees both ends. That is the perspective the consulting work rests on.

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.

Operators see both layers because they have lived in both layers. That is the gap a fractional CAIO and operator-led AI consulting fills.

The work

What Paul 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 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’s own businesses

Paul 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 roughly 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 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 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.
Pressure-tested 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 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 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.

Start a conversation

Send a message.

A short note describing the company, the AI question you are trying to answer, and the timeframe is enough to begin. First call typically within two business days.

  • Company — name, sector, stage, and approximate revenue band.
  • The question — what you’re trying to decide or build.
  • Timeframe — when this needs to be in motion.

Goes directly to paul@paul-okhrem.com. Reply within two business days. No marketing list, no third-party tracking.