Questions, answered plainly

Usually within a week or two. The first 30-minute conversation is free, and smaller pieces of work can often begin right after we've agreed scope.

No deck and no pressure. We listen to what's not working, ask a few questions, and give you our honest read — including whether we're the right people to help, or whether you don't actually need us.

Us. We don't farm work out to faceless agencies abroad. If you hire The Clever Clown, you get the hands-on team that scoped your project.

Most of our clients are small and mid-sized UK businesses, typically 10–250 staff — the point where spreadsheets and goodwill start to creak. But we're happy to talk to founders and larger teams too.

Fixed scope and price wherever possible, so risk doesn't quietly migrate to your side. Ongoing work runs on a monthly retainer. There's a pricing page with indicative ranges.

We talk about it before anything moves — not after. If something genuinely changes, we agree the impact on scope, price and dates together, in writing.

Almost always. A short, fixed-price "sprint" — an audit, a single automation, or an AI pilot — is a low-risk way to see how we work before committing to anything bigger.

We're UK-based and that's where most of our clients are, but we're happy to work with UK businesses operating internationally. Get in touch and we'll be straight with you about fit.

Always. Code, documentation, accounts — the lot. No vendor lock-in and no mystery boxes. We hand over cleanly so you could carry on without us if you ever wanted to.

Modern, boring, reliable tech with a novel application: React/Next.js, Python, Node and Postgres, on cloud you can understand. We choose what fits your scale, not what's fashionable.

You own everything and you're free to walk away. Many clients keep us on a light retainer for maintenance or the next idea — because they want to, not because they're stuck.

We only build AI where it earns its keep — assistants over your own documents, automated data entry, document processing. We start with a tightly-scoped pilot on one real task and measure the result before going further.

That's central to how we design these systems. We keep humans in the loop, use sensible guardrails and data governance, and are clear about where your data goes and who can see it. If something isn't safe to do, we'll say so.

Yes — that's one of the most common things we fix. We tidy the data plumbing, agree what each number means once, and build dashboards your team will actually open. See Data & dashboards.