Why Rhize exists
We got tired of AI that never made it past the demo.
Owners were paying for agencies that sold impressions and AI vendors that sold features. Neither touched the actual constraint: the missed call, the stalled quote, the owner as the only integration. So we became the firm that installs AI where the work happens, measures it, and hands it over.
The Story
We kept walking into the same business. A successful owner — $2M, $3M, $5M a year — running everything through themselves. Quotes sitting unsent because only they could send them. The same customer re-keyed into three systems that don't talk. Real numbers locked in a spreadsheet nobody trusts. They'd built a job, not a business — and it couldn't run without them.
Most had already tried to fix it. They'd bought the seventh tool. They'd hired the agency that took $3k a month and handed back a report full of impressions. None of it stuck, because none of it was built to work together — and a lot of vendors profit from keeping it that way.
So we stopped selling services off a menu. Every engagement starts from one question: what's the constraint that, fixed, changes the business most in the next six months? Then we engineer that fix — AI-native software, automation, Rhize OS where it fits — measure it against where you started, and agree on delivery, access and ongoing care.
Between us we've spent years in the mud of this work — the development, the SEO, the automation, the AI implementation — long enough to know the difference between something that demos well and something that still runs a year later. That's the only kind of thing we'll put our name on.
The Founders
Tom Cassidy
Co-Founder — Marketing, Automation & AI
Tom's background is in marketing strategy, CRM automation, and AI implementation. He's the person in the room who asks “what does this do for the business?” — connecting the work to a useful outcome and the support your team needs. Baselines and acceptance checks are agreed for the project, rather than assuming every build has the same measure of success.
Jim Deola
Co-Founder — Development, AI & SEO
Jim is a full-stack developer who builds the part that compounds — the websites, the AI workflows, and the data graph that ties a business's operations into one system instead of seven. He pairs deep SEO expertise with hands-on AI implementation, and builds production-grade integrations that still run a year later. No templates, no shortcuts, no hostage code — what he builds, you own.
How We Work
The answer to “how is this different from the agency that burned me?”
01
We diagnose before we build.
We start with the one constraint that matters most — the missed call, the slow follow-up, the decision that waits on you — and we'll tell you if the answer is "you don't need AI for this." Fixing the process comes before automating it.
02
Clarity about ownership and care.
Agree on deliverables, access, documentation and third-party dependencies. Hosting, software, maintenance and support have ongoing costs; ownership and ongoing care are separate.
03
Define what working means.
Agree on acceptance checks and responsibilities before work starts. Deployment, ongoing operation and future changes are different parts of the scope, not an unlimited free-completion promise.
04
Measured against your baseline.
Agree on a useful baseline and measure for the work: leads, response time, booked jobs or hours, where the data supports it. Acceptance checks and measurement responsibilities belong in the scope, not a blanket revenue promise.
The name Rhize comes from rhizome— the underground root system where plants grow laterally, interconnected rather than top-down. It's how we think about an operating system: one connected thing that grows under the surface and compounds, not a stack of disconnected tools bolted on top.
Before you hire anyone
Ten questions to ask any AI partner. Here are our answers.
The questions a careful buyer should ask every agency or AI firm. We’d rather answer them up front.
01What do you think our biggest constraint is, and what’s your evidence?
We won’t guess on a first call. We ask about lead flow, response times, who handles what and where the owner gets pulled in, then tell you what we’d look at first and why.
02Show me a comparable client: where they started, what changed, how long it took, what it earned.
A Mid-Atlantic glass and door fabricator. Nine hand-offs on a whiteboard became one job pipeline, at 86% less over five years than the Salesforce quote for the same scope.
03What will be live at day 30, 60 and 90?
Discuss delivery phases, dependencies and acceptance checks during scoping. Dates and deliverables depend on the work agreed, not a universal 30/60/90-day promise.
04What do you need from our staff, and what happens if they don’t adopt it?
A working session up front, sign-off before we build, and the people who’ll use it in the room while we build it. Software built next to a workflow gets ignored, so we build inside it.
05What do we own from day one?
Clarify the deliverables, access, licensing and third-party accounts in the agreed scope. Ownership does not remove ongoing hosting, software, maintenance or fine-tuning costs.
06What happens when the AI gets it wrong?
Identify the human review, logs, alerts and fallback paths that the workflow needs, then verify them. Do not assume every system has the same safeguards.
07Does the dashboard connect activity to booked jobs and revenue?
That depends on the available data and integrations. Agree which outcomes the reporting can support and verify those connections.
08What are the all-in costs?
Scoped before any work starts: the build, software, ongoing support, and what counts as a change. You approve the number before we begin.
09What’s out of scope?
Written down in the scope, not discovered on the invoice.
10If we stop working together in six months, what keeps working?
Review the handover, licences, account access and ongoing operating costs before work begins. What continues and who supports it depend on the agreed scope and third-party services.
Talk to the people who
actually build it.
No account managers, no hand-offs — you talk to Tom and Jim.
Book a 30-minute call. Tell us where work stalls, ask us the hard questions, and get straight answers about what we'd look at first — whether you hire us or not.
No obligation. No pitch deck.