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Melian Ventures

Consulting

AI engineering, delivered by the people who will do the work.

We take on a small number of engagements a year so each one gets a founder's attention. Here is what we do, how an engagement runs, and who it suits.

  • LLM application development

    From a working prototype to a service your team runs: prompts, tools, guardrails, observability and the boring parts that make it dependable.

  • Agent systems

    Multi-step agents that use tools, keep state and know when to stop and ask. We have shipped these for our own products and know where they break.

  • Retrieval and evaluation

    Retrieval pipelines that are measured rather than assumed, with evaluation suites so you know when a change made things worse.

  • Model deployment on Google Cloud

    Cloud Run, Vertex AI, Firestore and Postgres, with cost controls from day one. We run our own products on the same stack.

  • Prototyping and technical due diligence

    A week to find out whether the idea works before you commit a quarter to it, or an independent read on someone else's AI claims.

Engagement models

Fixed-scope project

A written scope, a fixed price and a delivery date. Best when you know what you want built.

Monthly retainer

A set number of days a month for ongoing work, with the same engineer throughout.

Advisory hours

Architecture reviews, code reviews or a second opinion, billed by the hour with no minimum.

How it runs

  1. 1

    A thirty-minute call to understand the problem. No charge, no slides.

  2. 2

    A written proposal within a week: scope, approach, price, and what we will not do.

  3. 3

    We build in the open, in your repository if you prefer, with a working demo every week.

  4. 4

    Handoff with tests, documentation and a recorded walkthrough, so the work survives us leaving.

Fit

A good fit

  • You have a specific problem and want it solved well, not a slide deck about AI.
  • You are on Google Cloud, or open to it.
  • You want the code, the tests and the documentation, not a dependency on us.

Probably not

  • You need a large team on site next week.
  • You want a model trained from scratch.
  • The brief is to make something look AI-powered rather than work better.

Ready when you are.

Request a quote