For companies
If you're a mid-market team without a CRO, a CFO with a six-month transformation backlog, or a leadership group spending six figures on consultants for repeatable questions — Stepping Stone gives you executive judgment, on-demand, in the segments you operate in.
Who this is for
You have a CEO and a CFO. You don't have a Chief AI Officer, a Chief Transformation Officer, or a fractional CRO on retainer. Stepping Stone fills in the missing seats — for the cost of one of them.
Standard playbook, accelerated timeline. Get the executive frameworks your sponsor's other portcos use, without re-paying the consulting fee at every portfolio.
Tech modernization, AI adoption, M&A integration, cost takeout. The frameworks exist — Stepping Stone organizes them by the exact problem you're solving.
What you get
What an advisory output looks like
No black-box LLM output. Every response is traceable to the executive knowledge that informed it.
Question
We're a 600-person healthcare services company. Where should we start with AI — a chatbot, a vendor selection process, or building internal capability?
Direct answer
Start with capability, not deployment. At 600 employees you don't need a product yet — you need a small team (2–3 people) who can evaluate vendors, run controlled pilots, and translate clinical workflow into AI-compatible problem statements.
Frameworks applied
Recommended next steps
Cited executive knowledge
Where Stepping Stone fits
Fast like an LLM, deep like a senior operator, cited like a Big-4 deliverable.
What it costs
Generic AI is cheap per seat but ungrounded. Consulting is grounded but six figures an engagement. Stepping Stone is one company-wide subscription that cites every answer.
Where Stepping Stone fits
| Capability | Generic AI | Stepping Stone | Management consulting |
|---|---|---|---|
| Speed to first answer | Minutes | Minutes | Weeks |
| Grounded in real executive judgment | No | Yes — every answer cites a contributor | Yes |
| Segment-specific frameworks | Generic | Yes | Yes |
| Reusable across your team | Per-seat licenses, no shared context | One subscription, every leader | Deliverable owned by partners |
| Cost | $20–200/user/month | Mid four figures / month | $100k+ per engagement |
Total cost of ownership
A steady monthly rate versus consulting engagements that step up with every new scope.
Illustrative 12-month total cost of ownership — Stepping Stone at the listed Team rate vs two consulting engagements within the stated range.
From our pilot partners
“We canceled two retainers in the first quarter. The framework Stepping Stone gave us for vendor selection was tighter than what we got from a Big 4 — and we were able to run it ourselves.”
Ready to see it?
We'll demo the platform against an actual question your team is working on. You walk away with the artifact whether you sign up or not.