Frequently Asked Questions

I'm Rian Schmidt. I've been a technical consultant and leader for well over twenty years. In addition to experience with big companies, including Amazon, and small venture-funded and bootstrapped start-ups, I hold an MBA from Stanford University and an electrical engineering degree from the University of Minnesota. My interests lie in process automation and custom product development utilizing the latest range of AI and other machine learning tools. I live in war-torn Portland, Oregon with my wife, dogs, and chickens.

It was! Circinaut was the name of my previous consulting business for several years, but as I found that more and more of my time was spent consulting on AI projects, I decided to rebrand to help businesses understand what I do. Plus, you gotta change it up now and then.

It's a big range, but in my experience, most initial projects range from $15K-50K depending on complexity. We start with clear scope and budget before any work begins. Many clients start with a smaller proof-of-concept ($5K-15K) to test the concept, and then we add on features as they become obvious needs or extensions.

Well, you might have guessed, it depends. BUT! I've found that a focused initial solution typically takes 4-8 weeks from agreement to deployment. We can often have a working prototype in 2-3 weeks to validate the approach. So, yes, that's a broad sweeping generalization, but short of a super complex project with lots of stakeholders and moving parts, things tend to size up to a couple of months for the first round.

Thankfully, that's never happened, but we start small for exactly this reason. The initial project is designed to prove value quickly. If it doesn't work, you haven't invested in a massive implementation, and all of my agreements are easily canceled with only fees for work completed due. I don't want anyone working with me if they're not excited (or at least very comfortable) doing so.

No. In fact, I often find it best if my clients aren't technical so that they come into the conversation with a business problem needing solving rather than a guess at a solution they think might solve it. You need to understand the business, and we'll work together to come up with the optimal technical solution.

If that's required for the solution to work, absolutely—that can be essential for solutions to be useful. I'm generally platform agnostic and work with your current tech stack (CRM, databases, tools) rather than requiring you to change everything. Now, expert knowledge of specialized systems might mean I'm not the right provider for your project, but that would be unusual.

Security will be built-in from day one. I earned a CISSP certification and have ISO and SOC2 compliance experience. All of my work is completed with an eye towards appropriate levels of security and privacy.

Absolutely. I've worked with clients all over the country.

Naturally, if you're in the Portland area, it's easy for us to get together in person, and if you're on the West Coast, timezones are a bit less of a thing. But my work is usually pretty asynchronous. There's generally plenty of overlap time for calls when needed, and I do a lot of my work at crazy hours anyway. If in doubt, drop me a line, and we can talk about it.