Agencies build what you wrote down. Consultancies advise and leave. We work alongside you until it is in use.

Gary Neville Gary Neville
Ben Eastwood Ben Eastwood
Danny Tomalin Danny Tomalin

Who we are.

We want the companies that make and move things to have the same advantage from AI that the largest technology companies already have. We put AI to work from inside the business, whether it is a client's, a founder's or our own, and hold it to one test: it pays, in the owner's numbers. Our own products are where we try new methods first, at our own cost. In the ventures, founders bring an industry and its buyers, and we run the product. The people who win the work are the people who do it: on site, beside your own team, until AI is simply how the business runs. Gary leads the strategy, Ben the technology and Danny the product, so nothing falls between them. The work can start with Two Days in Your Business.

Gary Neville

Gary Neville

Chief Executive Officer

Gary works with the boards of established businesses on the decision that matters most with AI: where it goes first, and what it must return. He has spent the past decade on the hard part of technology change, the point where a plan has to become the way a business works. He ran the delivery organisation, across software, design and data, of a technology firm working with Rolls-Royce, TotalEnergies and the AMRC, and went on to become its chief operations officer. He then oversaw innovation programmes with Barclays and Cancer Research UK, and directed an AI programme with the University of Manchester. With each client he stays until AI has spread from one line to the whole business.

Ben Eastwood

Ben Eastwood

Chief Technology Officer

Ben puts AI to work on the systems a business actually runs on, in a form its own people can check and own. He builds software for operations that have to keep running: he has led AI engineering teams in manufacturing and logistics, and worked on large-scale systems for UK healthcare and international retail and on applications for UK freight rail. He has worked end to end, from the data underneath to the applications people rely on, which is why he is calm about the hype and exacting about the detail: he will tell a board plainly what AI can be trusted with and what it cannot. With each client's team he decides how AI fits the systems already in place, and makes sure they can run it without outside help.

Danny Tomalin

Danny Tomalin

Chief Product Officer

Danny turns what AI could do for a business into something its people actually use. He has taken products from first design through to revenue: he led design teams, founded a technology company and sold it, and led growth across the United States and Canada as chief growth officer of the business that bought it. He has also brought AI applications to market for manufacturing and healthcare across Europe, the Middle East and Africa. He still starts every idea with the people who will live with it every day. With each client he chooses the problems worth solving and holds every change to two tests: the people it is meant for choose to use it, and the business sees a return.

Our story.

Inside change programmes for Rolls-Royce, TotalEnergies and the AMRC, and later in AI for manufacturing and logistics, we kept seeing the same thing. The technology usually worked, but the return depended on choices only the business could make: which problem came first, who checked the work and who answered for the result. When those choices fell to people about to move on, the change seldom outlasted them.

AI makes those choices costlier to get wrong. We came to believe the best advice on them comes from people with their own money at stake who stay for the result. We founded Startwell on that belief, so what we put to a board is the kind of decision we take, and answer for, ourselves.

That is why we put our own money into products, to prove new methods at our expense before any client relies on them, and why we hold equity in the ventures we share with founders: we carry an owner's risk as well as an adviser's view. A client's data, designs and know-how stay with that client and never go into a product of ours.

We want every business we work with to be worth more because of what AI does in it, with its own people running that work long after we have left.

How we got here.

  1. Before

    Technology at work in major organisations

    Gary leading delivery for Rolls-Royce, TotalEnergies, HomeServe and the AMRC; Ben engineering systems for UK healthcare and international retail; Danny building and selling his own technology company.

  2. 2024

    AI, first-hand

    Ben leading teams of AI engineers, and Danny taking AI to market across Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

  3. 2025

    Startwell is founded

    Founded on 13 November 2025 to put AI to work in established businesses, alongside their own people.

  4. 2026

    All three sides, running

    The first clients, with us inside their businesses. The first products of our own in daily use. The first ventures shared with founders. One habit, in three kinds of business, from the first year.

  5. Now

    The next businesses

    More companies that make and move things with their own people running AI, and the ventures we share growing into businesses of that kind.

Straight to the founders

Let's find where AI will pay in your business.