// AI LEADERSHIP · CANADIAN OPERATORS

Senior AI leadership for Canadian operators.

We build AI systems that move the P&L and ship to production in weeks, not pilots that die in a slide deck. Founder-led, on the tools your team already runs.

Derik Lawlis, founder of ThriveAI Derik Lawlis · Founder
Book a strategy call // 45 MIN · EN OR FR
// SECTORS Professional services & training · Precision manufacturing · Distribution & wholesale · Federal departments & prime contractors
// 01 · THE NUMBER

AI is moving from pilot to P&L.

In a controlled study with 758 consultants, BCG and Harvard Business School found knowledge workers using GPT-4 completed tasks 25% faster, produced 40% higher-quality output, and finished 12% more work. Junior consultants gained 43%.

0% FASTER ON TASKS 0% HIGHER QUALITY 0% LIFT FOR JUNIORS // BASELINE: WORKERS WITHOUT AI ACCESS

Field experiment, n=758. Dell’Acqua et al., HBS Working Paper 24-013.

Derik Lawlis, founder of ThriveAI
// DERIK LAWLIS · FOUNDER
// 02 · FOUNDER

Two prior exits, and more than ten years building software systems.

Derik Lawlis runs every ThriveAI engagement personally. The strategy call is with him, and the work is delivered by him and the senior people he works with.

It’s operator-built, delivered bilingually in English and French, and based in Ottawa.

// 03 · CONNECTED STACK

We ship on the tools your team already runs.

Connected through MCP, our agents read, write, and act inside the systems you already operate.

Microsoft 365 Email · Files · Calendar
QuickBooks Online Accounting · Estimating
Autodesk Fusion 360 CAD · PDM versioning
Pipedrive CRM
PandaDoc Contracts · Documents
Fellow.ai Meeting intelligence
Notion Knowledge base
Slack Team comms
Google Workspace Email · Files · Calendar
Custom connection Your custom MCP server

// And the stack you already operate. New connectors in days, not months.

// 04 · WHAT WE BUILD

Five capabilities, one way of working.

We build inside the stack you already run: Microsoft 365, your ERP, your CAD tool, your accounting. We connect what is already there before we add anything new.

01

Quoting & RFQ workflows

We extract the BOM from CAD or PDF drawings, draft quotes in hours instead of days, and price complex jobs from the plans, all configured to the way your shop already writes quotes.

02

Data cleanup & consolidation

We pull from every system you use, verify across sources, surface the conflicts, and produce a single clean dataset your team can trust, refreshed daily.

03

Customer onboarding & ops sequences

AI orchestrates multi-tool sequences across CRM, billing, support, docs, analytics, and payments, so hand-offs run themselves and drop-off surfaces at the right moment.

04

Document & coding workflows

We automate the paperwork that runs the operation: POs, GL coding, certificates of compliance, ISO documentation, and inspection reports.

05

Bilingual customer communication

We triage and draft customer email in English, French, and Spanish, Quebec French specifically, so your senior people stop opening every message.

These patterns ship across every industry we work in. The actual work is whatever moves your P&L the most. See where they ship →

// 05 · RECENTLY SHIPPED

Three operations untangled.

Real work for Canadian operators.

// PROFESSIONAL SERVICES

A six-tool customer onboarding

New-customer onboarding ran across Notion, Pipedrive, Google Docs, Slack, PandaDoc, and Fellow, so customer signal lived in six places and meeting context stayed in one person’s head.

We built an AI pipeline that consolidates every new-customer signal into the Notion brain: call notes from Fellow, contracts from PandaDoc, CRM activity from Pipedrive. The onboarding team starts each engagement with the full picture and sets the customer up for success instead of stitching it together themselves.

Shipped
// PRECISION MANUFACTURING

Email to quote, untangled

Quote requests come in by email as zips of STEP files and PDF plans (customers won't stop emailing). The business leader was manually importing each part into Fusion, cross-referencing prior QuickBooks quotes, fetching metal and tooling costs, and calculating every price by hand, which took hours per quote.

Two workflows. (1) Quote from email: AI reads the inbox, parses the STEP files and PDF plans, pulls prior QuickBooks pricing on similar parts, fetches current metal and tooling costs, calculates the quote, and posts it into QuickBooks ready to send. (2) Fusion file versioning: when specs change after a part is already coded for the machine, the system edits the existing cut file instead of re-coding the new one from scratch.

Shipped
// COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION

One source of truth, finally

Product, customer, pricing, and inventory data was scattered across an SAP database and dozens of spreadsheets, and staff spent hours copy-pasting from supplier PDFs by hand. RFPs and quote requests piled up in a shared inbox, with no single source of truth and quoting that took forever.

We built a working layer on top: AI consolidates the data daily, responds to RFPs by reading the Revit and DWG plans and pulling the full equipment BOM, handles smaller off-plan quote requests, routes incoming email from the shared inbox to the right person, drafts replies, and helps with broader customer communications. Quote turnaround drops from days to hours.

Shipped
// 06 · WHAT CUSTOMERS SAY

In their words.

From operators we've shipped for.

Fahd Alhattab, founder of Unicorn Labs

Derik came in to help us find automation opportunities in our leadership development agency. We work with a lot of client information across tools: sales calls, proposals, onboarding docs, project plans. My team was easily spending one to two hours every new client onboarding just moving information around and consolidating it.

He helped me map the flow visually on a whiteboard, then teaching me alongside him in Claude Code, we integrated all those tools into one process. The agent now pulls the necessary information from every section and brings it into one cohesive view. When a few things broke a few days after testing, he got on a call with me and we troubleshot it together.

Working with Derik to build these AI agents has been fun, very worthwhile, with a huge ROI for my team. I'd highly recommend it to anyone.

Fahd Alhattab
Founder · Unicorn Labs
// 07 · EXPLORE

Where AI ships at ThriveAI.

We work with Canadian operators from $1M to $50M and up. Pick the vertical that matches your operation.

AI for private equity

Per-portfolio 100-day AI sprint for Canadian PE portfolio companies.

Explore →

AI for CNC shops

Email-to-quote, CAD-to-quote, shop-floor agents on the ERP you already run.

Explore →

AI for distributors

Order intake from email, PDF, EDI. CS triage. SAP Business One integration.

Explore →

AI for QuickBooks bookkeeping

Receipt extraction, categorization, reconciliation, month-end close.

Explore →

AI for law firm intake

24/7 intake triage, conflict checking, document collection. Law 25 aware.

Explore →

AI for Canadian RFP tracking

Daily CanadaBuys, MERX, SEAO scans. Fit scoring. Response packaging.

Explore →

AI for customer onboarding

Account setup, document collection, KYC, stuck-customer recovery.

Explore →

AI voice agents

Bilingual phone agents for Canadian SMBs. Quebec French native.

Explore →

Comparing ThriveAI against in-house hire, Big Four, Cursor, n8n, Custom GPTs, or DIY Claude Code? Six honest comparisons.

Compare alternatives
// 08 · WHY US

A small, focused team, where the person who scopes the work also delivers it.

Operator-built

ThriveAI is led by a founder with two prior software exits and a senior industrial engineer with deep digital transformation and program management credentials. Senior people stay on every engagement, end to end.

Bilingual by design

Working sessions, runbooks, and customer-facing agents are delivered in English, French, or both, Quebec French specifically, and built in Ottawa.

You own everything

Code in your GitHub repo, API keys in your account, infrastructure on your Cloudflare or your cloud. The system keeps running with or without us. No vendor lock-in, no hostage IP.

Ecosystem-flexible

We deploy on Claude, GPT, Gemini, and open-weights models. We pick the technology that fits the problem, not the vendor with the loudest sales pitch.

// 09 · COMMON QUESTIONS

Questions Canadian operators actually ask.

Our current clients run between $1M and $15M in annual revenue, across professional services, manufacturing, and distribution. We have capacity for businesses up to $50M and beyond if the work fits.

Engagements are scoped to the operation. We price after the discovery call once we understand the workflow, the stack, and the outcome you need.

Yes, when the workflow has a clear, measurable outcome we can both agree on (hours saved, quote turnaround, error rate, revenue per rep). We can structure part or all of the engagement fee against the result instead of the hours. We work out the fit on the discovery call.

Most production workflows go live in 21 to 45 days from signed proposal, depending on the integrations involved. Multi-quarter programs run longer with monthly delivery cycles.

We've shipped on SAP Business One, QuickBooks, Fusion, and Microsoft 365, plus modern SaaS tools like Pipedrive, Notion, Slack, and PandaDoc. For other ERPs and CAD systems, we'll scope the integration honestly on the discovery call. If we don't think we can ship cleanly against your stack, we'll tell you in week one.

Quebec French specifically. Working sessions, runbooks, and customer-facing agents are delivered in EN, FR, or both. Our French site is at thriveai.com/fr/.

You own everything. The system lives in your GitHub repo and your cloud account, with your API keys, and we document as we build so any senior engineer (yours or another vendor) can run it. Handoff is part of the engagement. No lock-in clause, no proprietary platform to migrate off.

Yes. Standard mutual NDA on request, before any deep stack conversation.

// START THE CONVERSATION

Let’s book a strategy call.

Forty-five minutes with Derik. You leave with the two highest-ROI AI workflows scoped for your operation: what they do, what they cost, and what ships first.

Book a strategy call