Billion Parrots

Executive AI coaching,
Product and Growth Advisory

Working with senior leaders, CPOs, Innovation Leads, founders, and consultancy leaders to build genuine AI fluency and strategic capability.

AI Enablement

From apprehension to fluency.

Admitting you're not fully au fait with AI is the opposite of what is expected of leaders today. You've done the courses, but still don't have the personal fluency to lead AI initiatives with confidence.

We create psychologically safe environments that allow you to reset, and make sure you've got it locked in. We work together on your actual challenges, not hypothetical scenarios, to build a practical hands-on understanding.

Fluency is built through guided practice on work that actually matters.

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Product Advisory

For leaders frustrated at the rate of change.

Product organisations break in predictable ways. Discovery and delivery become disconnected. Roadmaps and plans turn political. Engineering and design stop trusting each other. Customer experience takes a back seat, or technical debt never gets addressed. New product development never seems to get out of the brainstorm workshop.

We offer a thinking partnership that can turn its hand to getting pretty much anything started in the right way.

No theoretical frameworks. No generic playbooks. Just hard-won perspective applied to your situation.

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Growth Advisory

A thinking partner for the decisions that count.

Are you a growth-stage business stressed about what's next? I'm not saying we have the answer, but we have been through it; zero to one, scale-up and exit (twice). All experiences and companies are unique, but sometimes it helps just to kick it around with someone who's been there and can put themselves in your shoes.

We work with founders, CEOs, and consultancy leaders as a strategic thinking partner with direct experience of the decisions you're facing.

Focused, opinionated advisory. No agenda beyond helping you widen your options, and make better decisions.

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From apprehension to fluency. From the executive to the organisation.

A phased, confidential AI capability programme designed to start where leadership actually is, and build from there.

Not everyone is happy to learn in public, but leading AI needs an internal confidence that is founded in practical understanding and usage. We create a safe space for resetting your understanding of AI that layers up your confidence through building your personal fluency, and builds to enable you to think realistically about both AI opportunities and risks.

When executives lack genuine AI fluency, they can't ask the right questions, make informed investment decisions, or lead their teams with credibility. The Billion Parrots way is to start with those that set the direction, and help their teams get to the same place.

Start that conversation

Product advisory for leaders who need to move faster.

Experienced, opinionated advisory for CPOs, VPs of Product, and founders, on ways of working, innovation and new product development approaches, AI-native delivery, and building product organisations that actually ship.

Product organisations break in predictable ways. Discovery and delivery become disconnected. Roadmaps become political. Engineering and design stop trusting each other. Innovation and new product development stalls.

We have seen it from the inside in many enterprises. We know what it looks like when it works and what it takes to get there.

This is not a consultancy engagement. It is a thinking partnership with someone who has done it, has the scars, and has a point of view, and you can set loose on any product or innovation challenge.

Twenty years of product leadership across startups, scale-ups, and enterprise. Experienced Product Director and product and service innovation consultant. Hands-on with the full stack of modern AI tooling. No theoretical frameworks; just hard-won perspective applied to your specific situation.

Got a product problem worth solving?

Let's talk

What we work on

  • Ways of working

    Fixing the fractures between product, design, data, and engineering, and getting innovation started

  • Product Vision and Roadmap

    Setting a compelling vision, and translating that to practical initiatives

  • Innovation and new product approaches

    Ensuring the right ideas get to you, and giving you the tools to evaulate them and get them to market at pace

  • AI-native SDLC

    Building AI into the product process, not as a feature, but as a way of working

  • Use-case discovery

    Identifying and validating the AI opportunities most worth pursuing

  • Team capability

    Helping product teams reset their ways of working in order to work at the speed the market demands

  • Strategic clarity

    Cutting through roadmap noise to focus on what actually moves the business

Growth advisory for consultancies, founders, and the people who advise them.

Strategic thinking partnership for businesses navigating scale, pivots, exits, and the challenge of building AI into their client proposition.

Growth-stage businesses face a specific kind of challenge: the decisions get harder as the stakes get higher, and the people best placed to help are usually the ones who've already been through it.

We've been through it all. Startup, scale-up, rapid growth, and two exits. We work with founders, CEOs, and consultancy leaders as a strategic thinking partner, not a generalist adviser, but someone with direct experience of the decisions you're facing. No non-exec retainer, no equity, just good perspective based on real life experience.,

Who it's for
  • Founders and CEOs of growth-stage businesses who need a strategic sounding board with no agenda beyond helping them make better decisions.
  • Consultancy and agency leaders who are being asked by their clients to have an AI point of view and who want to build that capability credibly, or access a trusted partner to extend their offering.

Navigating something complex?

Start with a conversation. We'll tell you quickly whether we're the right fit.

Talk to us

What we work on

  • Strategic pivots

    When the model needs to change and you need more options

  • New products and new markets

    Expanding the product offering, new segments, and the assumptions that need testing

  • Exit readiness

    Building the narrative, the metrics, and the operational clarity that acquirers look for

  • AI in your client proposition

    Helping consultancies and agencies build a credible, differentiated AI offering without becoming an AI firm

  • Partnership strategy

    Identifying and structuring partnerships that accelerate growth

Paul Dawson
About

Paul Dawson

Founder, Billion Parrots

Paul has spent twenty years working at the intersection product, technology, and people change and is schooled in human-centred design, agile and lean product development. Twenty years delivering new customer experiences and business-critical systems for brands like Tesco, Virgin Atlantic and Barclays, then new products and services or ways of working for the likes of News UK, Thomson Reuters, The Economist, Abellio, Lloyds Bank, More Than insurance, Food Standards Agency, ARUP, William Hill, Jaguar Land Rover, FCDO, and others.

Paul has been a founder, a Director of Product for John Lewis Money, and an adviser to businesses navigating some of the harder decisions that come with growth.

Billion Parrots grew out of a simple observation: the executives being asked to lead on AI were the least able to admit they needed help with it, and those leading growing businesses just need someone sensible to talk to who's been there and has no agenda.

Contact

Ready to lead with genuine AI fluency?

Start with a conversation. No pitch, no proposal — just a direct discussion about where you are and whether we can help.

paul@billionparrots.ai

Message received.

Paul will be in touch directly.