StartWithUs

About

Experienced judgment. Intelligent execution.

StartWithUs is not a generic AI agency, offshore development shop or PowerPoint consultancy. We combine senior enterprise leadership, technology architecture and practical delivery experience to solve real business problems.

The right solution is not always AI.

Sometimes it's a simpler workflow, better data, improved integration — or the decision not to build something at all.

The first question is never "which model should we use?" It's whether you need a new solution in the first place, and how much of one. Automating a broken process just makes bad outcomes arrive faster; a well-designed pilot with a narrow scope often beats a platform programme that takes a year to reach its first user. The size of the answer should be matched to the size of the problem — a spreadsheet, a redesigned report, a single integration or a full build — and only then does it make sense to ask whether AI is the right tool for the job.

Our role is to help clients understand the difference.

  1. 01

    Understand the business problem.

  2. 02

    Challenge what really needs to change.

  3. 03

    Design the simplest effective solution.

  4. 04

    Deliver, measure and improve.

Leadership

Experience changes the questions you ask.

Portrait of Joseph Lapierre

Joseph Lapierre

Co-founder — Enterprise Strategy & Technology

20+ years of board-level technology and AI transformation leadership across financial services, insurance and regulated technology environments in Europe and Asia Pacific.

Established and led ERGO Technology & Services (part of Munich Re group) from greenfield, growing the engineering organisation to around 150–200 engineers — supported by product, finance, HR and other functions — as the delivery vehicle for a €2B transformation spanning eight markets, including founding ERGO Group's AI function. Earlier, CTO at Generali Asia and AXA Asia, and 15 years at Cigna, scaling a global digital healthcare platform to approximately £100M in revenue.

Portrait of Sam Kumar

Sam Kumar

Co-founder — Technology & Delivery

Twenty years building and leading enterprise technology across retail, financial services, telecoms and pharma in six countries, for organisations including ERGO, Cigna, Nestlé, Bayer, GSK, Virgin Media, UCAS and House of Fraser.

Co-founder of tieback.io, an AI-native Digital Product Passport platform, and fractional CTO for scaling businesses — bringing hands-on product and platform experience to StartWithUs engagements, from strategy and architecture through to delivered, working products. Techstars mentor, with executive education from Saïd Business School, Oxford, and an MBA from Strathclyde.

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