Durable operating systems, not shiny tools.
Rotunda Group is a small publication and a small consultancy on AI-native operations for small and middle-market businesses. We work with owner-run and owner-led operators — people who built their companies on judgment, relationships, and hard-won process, and who now have to decide what AI does to them, with them, or for them.
We write first. The publication is how we think in public, and how potential clients decide whether the way we think matches the way they run their business. If it does, we're happy to help. If it doesn't, we're happy to have written something useful anyway.
What we believe
Most AI consultants sell magic. We don't. The businesses worth helping were not built on magic. They were built on systems — some formal, most not. Our job is to name those systems, shape them into something repeatable, and add AI only where it makes the difference between keeping and losing a good operator's weekend.
Extract, don't create. Your experts have already said smart things on calls, in Slack, in emails, in training documents nobody opens. Before we generate anything new, we mine what's there. Most "AI content" projects should be "AI extraction" projects.
Deterministic before LLM. If a script can do it, a script should do it. LLMs are for reasoning, judgment, and language — not for counting rows or sending HTTP requests. Knowing the difference is most of the job.
Software is your labor model. The line item most operators think of as a cost center is actually the physical shape of who they have to hire, what those people do all day, and how much margin is possible. Get the stack right and the labor model follows. Get it wrong and every operational problem you have is downstream.
Who we work with
Our current work is concentrated in operations-heavy SMBs, with a near-term focus on short-term rental operators managing portfolios between fifty and a few thousand doors. We've started there because the problem space is well-bounded, the leverage is clear, and the people running these businesses tend to be the kind of pragmatic operators we like working with.
The thinking generalizes. If you run a field-services company, a small property-management firm, a boutique hospitality brand, or any operations-heavy business where the stack keeps the whole thing from falling over — you will recognize yourself in most of what we write.
Who's behind it
Rotunda is run by a small team. We publish under the group name rather than individual bylines because the thinking represents the firm, not any single person. If you want to talk — about an engagement, about the writing, about anything — we're reachable at [email protected].
A rotunda is the central, load-bearing room of a classical building. Everything in the structure meets there. We picked the name because that's what we want to be for the operators we work with — the room where the operating decisions actually get made.