Questions owners ask. Straight answers.

Modern Thesis is an AI strategy and implementation firm that helps non-tech companies get measurable ROI from AI. One team covers four disciplines: strategy, people (change management), implementation and ongoing stewardship. Every engagement starts with a strategic assessment that measures a baseline on the workflows we will change, and after launch we report the return against it. Jim Coleman founded Modern Thesis in Denver in 2026.

Modern Thesis works with non-tech companies, typically with $10 million or more in annual revenue. The buyer is usually the CEO, COO or founder. You don't need a CTO or an in-house technical team. What matters most is a leader who wants AI to show up on the bottom line and is willing to bring the team along.

Modern Thesis is based in Denver, Colorado, and works with clients across the United States. Much of the work happens remotely, and we come on site when it helps, for example to interview the people who do the work or to train a team in person. Where you are matters less than how your business runs, which is what the assessment maps first.

No. Modern Thesis works with non-tech companies and does not claim an industry specialty. Instead of starting from an industry template, every engagement starts by mapping how your business actually runs: your approvals, your data, your handoffs and your people. That way the work fits how your company operates, whatever business you are in.

An AI automation agency is often the faster, cheaper choice for one clearly defined automation. Modern Thesis fits when you first need to decide what to build, bring your team along and keep the systems current after launch. We start with a baseline and a ranking of opportunities by return, and we stay after the build to maintain it and report what it pays back.

Many AI consultants advise and then hand the work to someone else. At Modern Thesis, the people who recommend the work are on the same team as the people who build it. Jim leads strategy, and our AI specialists and Forward Deployed Engineers shape that strategy with him and lead the build. Then we stay through stewardship, so the advice is tested against real results.

Hire an AI engineer when AI is core to your product, you have a steady build backlog and you have a technical leader to manage that person. Modern Thesis fits a non-tech company without a CTO that needs strategy, building, change management and upkeep without recruiting one hard-to-find specialist. If you later want AI in-house, you own the code and documentation, so a new hire can take it over.

Keep them. ChatGPT, Claude and Copilot are good tools for individuals, and for many teams they are the right first step. Modern Thesis fits when the business needs AI connected to its own systems and data, built into the workflows the company runs on, adopted by the whole team and measured against a baseline. We use the tools you already pay for wherever they fit.

You will see it against a baseline. Before we build anything, the assessment measures time, cost and error rates on the workflows we plan to change. After launch, we report results against that baseline in numbers your business already tracks. If a system isn't paying back, the numbers show it, and stewardship is where we fix it or change course.

Some people may, and we plan for it from the start. People resist AI when they think it puts their jobs at risk. Change management is part of every engagement: clear communication from leadership, training for the people who will use the tools, and incentives that reward the people who adopt them. The goal is capacity, not cuts, so your team moves up to higher-level work.

Waiting is how businesses fall behind. The pace of change is the reason stewardship exists. We keep your systems current as better tools arrive, so you are never locked into last year's version of anything. Starting now also means that when better tools arrive, you already have a baseline to measure them against and a team used to working with AI.

No. Almost every business we see is messy, and untidy data is the most common implementation problem there is. Sorting it out is part of the work. The assessment finds where the mess sits and how much it costs, and the roadmap only includes cleanup that a valuable workflow depends on, so you don't spend months tidying records nobody needs.

We agree how your data is handled, in writing, before we access anything. We never use client data to train AI models, ours or anyone else's. We use it only to build and run your own systems, with access limited to what the work needs. You own your data, accounts, code and documentation, and our access is removed when the engagement ends. Our data policy has the details.

Less than you might expect. Modern Thesis owns the work, so you are not managing a project on top of running the business. We agree your time commitment up front and keep to it. Expect to spend time setting priorities at the start, reviewing findings at the end of the assessment and making decisions at key points, while your team gives us access to the people and systems involved.

Every engagement is priced to its scope. Modern Thesis does not publish a rate card, because no two companies need the same work. After a first conversation, we understand which workflows are in view and how much of the business they touch, and we scope and price the work to fit. You see the scope and the price in writing before any work starts.

That depends on what gets built first, so we won't promise a number before we have seen your business. The assessment is the first week of the project, and it defines the first build: what it is, what it should return and how we will measure it. You leave the assessment with a roadmap that sets out what happens next and in what order.

Jim Coleman leads strategy and works directly with owners and executives. Our AI specialists and Forward Deployed Engineers shape the strategy with him and lead the build, working with your team on your systems. Change management is part of every engagement, so your people come along from the first week. You talk to the people who will build the work from the start.

Stewardship is the ongoing work of monitoring, maintaining and improving AI systems after launch, so they stay accurate, stay current as tools change and keep paying back. At Modern Thesis it has no set end date. We keep your systems running, adopt better tools when they arrive and report the return against the baseline measured before the build.

You own it. Your company owns its data, accounts, code and documentation. We use the tools you already pay for where they fit and build custom where they don't, and we document what we build so someone else can understand and run it. If you ever want to bring the work in-house or move to another provider, you have everything you need to do that.

We test every system before it ships and design human review into the workflow wherever judgment matters. A person checks AI output before it reaches a client, a decision or a record that counts. After launch, stewardship measures accuracy over time and adjusts the system when it slips. The aim is a system you can trust without checking everything it does by hand.

Then we'll tell you. The assessment ranks every opportunity by return, and some workflows aren't worth automating. If the numbers don't support building something, we say so plainly. Knowing where AI won't pay is useful in its own right, because it keeps money and your team's attention on the places where it will.

No. Modern Thesis (modernthesis.org) is an independent AI strategy and implementation firm based in Denver. It is not affiliated with Thesis, the nootropics brand, or with Thesis Inc., the digital marketing agency in Portland. It is not an academic thesis or dissertation service and is not related to the Modernthesis LaTeX template. It is not a software product either: Modern Thesis builds and runs systems for each client.

Modern Thesis is a separate company owned by Jim Coleman. Jim co-founded xFusion in 2020, and it is now a 70-person company. That is where he first put AI to work on live operations, and then for several of xFusion's clients, before offering this work to other companies through Modern Thesis.