About
Who you'd be working with
A UK AI consultancy run by people who build AI products, not people who only advise on them.
![map[class:w-full rounded-3xl object-cover object-center src:images/headshot.jpg]](https://www.10kinds.co.uk/images/headshot.jpg)
- Founder, Bazam.ai
- AWS Certified Generative AI Developer, Professional, AWS’s top certification tier
- Postgraduate Diploma in Business Administration
- Based in the UK, working globally
Alan Bates
Founder, 10 Kinds
AWS's top certification tier
AWS Certified Generative AI Developer, Professional
AWS’s Professional tier, the top of its certification ladder. It’s the level AWS reserves for people already designing and running generative AI systems in production, not for anyone learning the basics.
Verify on CredlyAlan Bates is the founder of 10 Kinds, an AI consultancy that helps organisations get control of the AI they already use, then build valuable tools & workflows. He’s spent over 20 years working hands-on in technology, including multiple years at household names in media, telecoms and finance.
Alan is also the founder of Bazam.ai, an automated content marketing platform sold B2B. He also holds a Postgraduate Diploma in Business Administration, giving him formal grounding on the commercial side as well as the technical.
Building and shipping AI products himself is what shapes the judgement behind 10 Kinds’ advice: the controls an engineering team will follow, rather than the ones that read well in a policy document. The team works with leadership and engineering groups to find where AI risk sits, gets organisations ready for the moment someone asks them to prove it, and builds the systems that change how the business runs.
"Governance advice from someone who builds AI products, not someone who's only ever advised on them. I can talk risk and controls, and translate between compliance-speak, tech-speak and actual English"
Battle-tested advice
We build this, not just advise on it
10 Kinds is run by the founder of Bazam.ai, an AI content marketing platform we designed, built and run in production. Everything we recommend to you, we have had to make work ourselves, with real data and real consequences when it goes wrong.
Multi-agent systems, in production
Agents that plan, draft and revise a piece of work between them, with a human approval step before anything goes out. We know when that architecture is worth its cost and when a single well-aimed prompt does the same job.
Retrieval over a customer's own material
A knowledge layer so output comes from the customer’s facts rather than the model’s guesses. This is the control most organisations need, and the one most vendors gloss over.
Workflows that run unattended
Approved, scheduled jobs publishing into multiple third-party platforms without anyone remembering to press anything, with a record of what ran and what it skipped.
Tenant separation that has to hold
One customer’s brand material must never surface in another’s output. Getting that right in a live system is a different discipline from writing a policy saying it must be.
That’s where the advice comes from. Which problems are worth pointing a model at, which are cheaper to solve with ordinary software, and which impressive demos fall apart the moment they meet real data. You get that read before the money goes anywhere.
What else you could do
We’re not the only option and in some cases you might be better served by an alternative. Here’s what each one gives you, and what we do differently.
A large consultancy
A rigorous framework and a name your board already recognises.
Better than us if you need a globally recognised name on the report, or you're covering many jurisdictions at once.
What we do differently
- A fraction of the cost, because you aren’t funding a pitch team, a partner’s hours or a bench of graduates
- We design, build and ship the systems ourselves
- Advice from people running AI in production, not career advisors
- The team that scopes your work is the team that delivers it
An ISO consultant
A management system and a route to certification, often cheaper than us.
Better than us if certification is the only outcome you care about.
What we do differently
- Depth on AI specifically, from building AI products for a living
- We build and automate once the foundations are in place
- Training and support aimed at adoption, not just a management system
- A ranked view of where AI would pay, alongside the compliance work
A compliance platform
Vanta, Drata and the rest give you a control framework and evidence collection in software, monthly.
Better than us if you already know your gaps and just need somewhere to track them.
What we do differently
- Discovery that turns up the tools nobody put through procurement
- A facilitated session that ends with your leadership signing
- Training that changes how people work, not a dashboard that records that it happened
- A view on which controls matter for your business and which don’t
Your own team
Someone internal knows how the business really works, and they'll still be here in a year.
Better than us if that person exists and has the capacity to do it properly.
What we do differently
- Capacity, so this doesn’t sit behind the day job
- Patterns from doing this repeatedly rather than once
- An outside voice, which moves a board differently to an internal memo
- Speed, when a deal is waiting on the answer
Questions
What does 10 Kinds do? +
Three phases. Discover: we find where AI is already being used, including the tools nobody approved, and the manual work costing you most.
Foundations: the rules get agreed and everyone gets trained, desk to board. This is the phase that changes how people work, and it’s where most of the value is unlocked. The ISO/IEC 42001 evidence comes out of it.
Takeoff: we design, build and ship the systems that automate the slow work, then keep them running.
Most organisations arrive with the governance question because that’s what’s in front of them. You can start at any phase and stop after any of them.
How do we get started? +
Book a free 30-minute call. If a questionnaire’s what brought you here, bring it along and we can discuss it. We’ll give you a straight read on where you stand and what the right next step looks like.
Start with a conversation
Half an hour on where you stand: what AI is running, how well your people use it, and what would be worth automating. Bring a customer questionnaire if that’s what brought you here.
You'll leave with a clear position on where you stand and what to fix first, whether or not you hire us.