Business and AI,
connected.
Most AI projects stall because nobody connects the technology to a business outcome. I make that connection, from the leadership conversation to the system that runs every day: strategy, commercial work, product, build and operations.
Francisco Acasuso
Co-founder and CEO, Stratas
Profile and CV highlights
I help leadership teams move from an AI ambition to systems that run in daily operations. I have over fifteen years of experience across management consulting, growth and digital optimisation. At Stratas, which I co-founded in 2025, I own the strategy, commercial and development side and take part in the discovery, specification, build and operation of AI agent systems for Norwegian industrial, energy and SMB clients.
Most of my work today is build work: integrations, data pipelines and agent systems that run with minimal supervision inside the client's own stack, with the evaluation and monitoring that keep them running. I usually take the role of engagement lead or AI developer, from discovery with leadership teams through to adoption.
Focus
- AI implementation: agentic system design and multi-step pipelines, LLM orchestration and model routing, retrieval and context engineering, scoring models with explainable output, evaluation harnesses and human-in-the-loop review
- Data: pipelines and system integration, entity matching and deduplication, PostgreSQL, Supabase and vector stores, data quality and validation
- Security and governance: GDPR-aligned data handling, EEA data residency, in-tenant deployment and access control, telemetry, alerting and audit trails
- Strategy and commercial: go-to-market, service design and pricing, market sizing and competitor analysis, business cases and ROI, go/no-go recommendations, B2B sales and pipeline
- Growth and product: conversion optimisation, structured experimentation and A/B testing, UX research, CRM and marketing automation, analytics and product discovery
- Leadership and change: workshop facilitation, executive sessions on AI, training and adoption, coaching consultants and client teams, fractional AI leadership
Selected Stratas assignments
- 2025 – 2026
Energy services, preservation
Engagement lead, AI architect and delivery
Market intelligence agent monitoring 50+ sources for tenders, competitor and pricing signals; scores and explains each opportunity with a weighted scoring model adopted by the client. The client estimated it replaces several hours of manual research a week.
- 2025 – 2026
Engineering firm, steel fabrication
Engagement lead, commercial and delivery
AI quote costing engine that parses requests and attachments, applies material and rate tables, drafts the quote and flags upsell options. Tender cycle reduced from about 20 hours to about two.
- 2025 –
Industrial clients
Solution architect, managed operations
Automated matching of bills of materials, supplier and inspection data above 90% first pass. Scheduled runs, quality gates, telemetry and alerting cut diagnosis of a failing flow to minutes.
- 2025 –
SMB clients, Rogaland
Lead consultant
Discovery workshops and AI opportunity reports: bottleneck mapping, use-case prioritisation, ROI cases and roadmaps. Fractional AI leadership for management teams.
Experience
- May 2025 – present · Stavanger
Co-founder and CEO
Stratas
Strategy and commercial, product and build, and delivery into production.
- 2021 – 2025 · Stavanger
Senior Manager, Innovation & Growth
PwC Norway
Client engagements across finance, manufacturing, energy and technology; led and coached a team of more than ten consultants. Two twelve-month assignments as on-site Chief Growth Officer at digital scale-ups, and growth lead across seven cohorts of PwC's Slingshot scale-up accelerator.
- 2020 – 2021 · Stavanger
Growth Manager
Boost.ai
- 2018 – 2020 · Remote
Business Optimisation Manager
iVisa
- 2014 – 2018 · London and Madrid
Conversion, UX and digital optimisation roles
ING, Betway Group, Conversion.com, The Economist
Education and languages
- Master of International Business, Hult International Business School, San Francisco
- Bachelor of Business Management, Universidad Loyola Andalucía, Córdoba
- Spanish (native), English (C2), Norwegian (B1)
Clients are named by sector. Full CV on request: franciscoacasuso@gmail.com
How I deliver, from concept to production.
Eight steps in four phases. Each step hands a clear decision to the next, so strategy carries all the way into the product people use every day.
- Strategy
- Design
- Delivery
- Adoption
Strategy
Discover
Understand the business problem, the stakeholders and the work people do today.
Define
Assess the opportunity, agree the product concept and prioritise a useful first scope.
Design
Design
Shape the user journey, workflows and interface. Use prototypes to make decisions concrete.
Architect
Choose the system boundaries, data model and integrations. Make cost, security and reliability explicit.
Delivery
Build
Implement the frontend, backend, data pipelines and AI behaviour around the agreed product.
Validate & launch
Test the critical paths, check the product with stakeholders and carry it into production.
Adoption
Operate & improve
Instrument usage and cost, gather feedback and refine the product after release.
Implement, train & onboard
Embed the product in the organisation’s day-to-day workflows. Train users, onboard teams and support adoption so people know how to use it confidently and get the full value.
Beyond work
Interests
Lived and worked in
Spain
United Kingdom
United States
China
Norway
Start-ups, mid-size companies and large corporations. Spanish (native), English (C2), Norwegian (B1).
Product & engineering notes
Notes on how we build and run AI products at Stratas.
Let’s have a coffee
Over fifteen years of consulting and growth, and hands-on AI delivery from discovery to daily operations. I can share my CV and talk through how I connect business outcomes with systems that run.
Available for a chat. In person in Stavanger, or remotely worldwide.