The Curator
That’s the AI landscape right now: new models every week, new tools every day.
I walk you past the obvious and stop you in front of the two or three things that actually matter for your firm.
AI Curator™
Understanding comes first. AI is still new enough to be intimidating, and intimidating enough to be avoided. My first job is to change that: to work through what AI can and cannot do for your specific business until everyone in the room can see it clearly.
The Road Here
In the 1990s, at the Dublin Institute of Technology's College of Marketing and Design, I wrote my thesis on marketing on the World Wide Web. It was called Marketing on the World Wide Web: Building a Paradigm for Web Based Commerce. The college told me the internet would never take off, that it would go the way of the French Minitel. I submitted it anyway. Around the same time I was tinkering with rudimentary IVR software, convinced that talking to computers would one day be normal. It took about thirty years longer than I expected, but here we are.
Then a decade in US technology. The first six years at ClickFunnels, one of the most successful bootstrapped business automation platforms of its era, where I joined as part of the small initial team and watched users grow from 6,500 to over 100,000. Sales and marketing automation first, then AI automation.
The second half went deep, at Respage: chatbots, voicebots, prediction models, an AI-first CRM, and an NLP-to-LLM migration, inside a business with $10M+ ARR. The products I ran were used by thousands of people across hundreds of companies and thousands of offices, with real consequences when they broke.
I left to build an independent practice for firms like yours.
Here's what that experience means in practice:
Why Mercurious?
Mercury was the Roman god of commerce, communication, and speed. Mercurious is Mercury merged with curious, because the most important thing you bring to AI isn’t technical knowledge; it’s the willingness to stay curious about what it can and cannot do. Keeping pace with it is my job, not yours.
I design AI products and automations, and I work with the people who have to use them. That includes knowing when AI shouldn't be involved at all: when the task needs a human, the decision needs a leader, or the moment simply isn't right.
How I Work
AI projects tend to fail the same way: the leadership approves, a system arrives, and the people who have to use it every day were never included in the specification. Projects that work solve a specific pain inside a real workflow, where the people who use it helped to shape the solution.
Every organisation already holds most of the knowledge needed to solve its own problems. The people on the ground know where the friction is. They know what takes too long, and what falls through the cracks every single week. They’ve just never been asked. Whether AI belongs in any of those places is the question we answer together.
The technology has repeatedly become cheaper and more capable, and I see no reason that stops. So I prefer to build for problems that exist now rather than anticipating what the firm might need in two years.
"The best way I know to take the fear away is to involve people in building the solution themselves. When you've helped design it, when your knowledge is baked into it, when it reflects your workflows and your language — it doesn't feel like a threat. It feels like a tool you made."
What gets counted is the work, never the people. The work in question is the kind that never reaches an invoice: the drafting, the reformatting, the chasing, the follow-up nobody logged. What comes back is hours, and people returned to the work they're actually paid for.
Don't take my word for it
Mercurious is a new practice, so these are former colleagues, not clients. Here's what the people who worked alongside me for years say about how I think, build, and lead.
"Rob worked closely with some of our largest clients to understand their needs and ensured that the product delivered real, measurable value. His ability to deliver results made a huge impact on our team and company. I would absolutely work with him again without hesitation."
"Working with Rob at Respage was an absolute pleasure. His openness made it possible for us to work closely with key customers and turn trials into long-term adoption. Every product he builds is thoughtfully constructed to last, with the customer's best interest at the centre."
"We shipped more than 10 products and big features together. What stands out about Rob is how he mixes deep product knowledge with empathy and calm leadership. He listens, asks the right questions, and really gets the technical side — which makes working with him easy and effective."
Client results will be published here as they're ready to share. Until then, the Fleet Log shows the same system working inside Mercurious every week.
The Curator
That’s the curator’s job, and it starts with just a commitment of one hour from you. You tell me about the firm as it is, and within an hour you’ll have a lot more clarity. Then, within another 48 hours, you’ll have my written recommendations.