AI readiness · Executive sessions & diagnostics

A partnership of Sapphire Advisory + Ikigai AI Ventures

How do you 10× your own productivity with AI?

You want your own agents working for you, but you don’t have the time to build your first one, the coaching to do it right, or a safe place to test what actually works versus the hype. We’re two ex-McKinsey operators who build and run agentic systems every day. In one Friday morning you build your own Chief-of-Staff agent on your real workload, and walk out with it already working for you.

For a limited time we’re running highly limited small-group coaching sessions: 12 people max, Friday morning, with two facilitators.

View the diagnostics
Why we built this

Taste comes from building your own agents.

You can’t talk seriously about agentic engineering without building your own. We run a chief-of-staff, slide-makers, and a second-brain wiki every day, each with its own performance loop, self-evolving to our intent and taste. That daily practice is how we tell what’s really working from what’s just marketing hype, because we and our agents are testing the latest every day.

01 · CHIEF OF STAFF

Runs the day

Triages inbound, drafts the replies, holds the threads, and surfaces what actually needs a decision. Tuned to how we work, not a generic assistant.

02 · SLIDE-MAKERS

Builds the decks

Turns a brief into a sourced, on-brand deck with the reasoning traceable back to the evidence. The work product, not a first draft to redo.

03 · SECOND-BRAIN WIKI

Holds the knowledge

A living wiki that ingests, cross-links, and recalls everything we read and decide, so nothing is lost and every answer is grounded.

Most of our peers want this and can’t get to it: no time to build their first agent, no coaching, no safe place to test and learn what holds up. That gap is exactly why Sapphire Advisory and Ikigai AI Ventures built this workshop, so you build your own Chief-of-Staff agent with people who do it for a living, and keep building from there.

Offerings

Three reads. One question: are you ready?

Each is a standalone engagement, written for a different buyer. Start where the question is most alive for you.

For your top team · or just you

Executive AI Diagnostic

Rapid diagnostic: structured interviews and a capability assessment of your top team, or a private one-on-one diagnostic and coaching. You get a written findings report, a personal debrief, and your first working agentic systems we build for you, not a deck that gathers dust.

  • Duration2 weeks
  • OutputReport, debrief + agentic systems
  • ScopeTop team or individual

30 minutes with the partner who’d run it. No deck, no pitch.

Not sure it fits?

Prefer a form? Send an inquiry
For your organisation

Company AI Readiness Diagnostic

A six-week sprint across your organisation: where AI will pay, where it won’t, what to build first, and what it actually takes for your people and data to be ready. A broad interview base, benchmarking and capability assessment, then the highest-impact levers to move toward top quartile on AI adoption.

  • Duration6-week sprint
  • OutputReadiness map + sequence
  • ScopeWhole organisation

Tell us about your organisation, and we reply within two business days.

Have questions first?

Prefer a form? Send an inquiry
Our engine

Powered by our Fusion consulting engine.

Fusion is the agentic engine behind the work we ship: it turns a brief into frontier-quality slides with the discipline of a top engagement manager, with storyline sign-off, evidence tracing on every claim, and a finished pack you would put in front of a client. Below is one sample slide from a Fusion pack.

Why now - Market contextFusion sample - Jul 2026

AI output has split the field - fast followers are moving now

~9xoutput gap between agent power users and everyone else, mid-2026
2023202420252026Power usersFast followersEveryone elseyou are here
Source: illustrative - directional pattern from 2024-26 adoption research01
How it works

Session. Read-out. Next step.

01 · IN THE ROOM

You build, hands-on

In the workshop you build a real agent on your own work; in a diagnostic we run structured interviews and a capability read on it. Either way it’s your real work, not hypotheticals: our harness does the heavy lifting in the background while you stay in the conversation.

02 · GET THE READ-OUT

Findings in writing

A precise, evidence-traced read-out: capability scores, exposure points, and the gaps that matter. Every claim is traceable to what we observed.

03 · DECIDE THE NEXT STEP

Your call, clearly framed

The read-out ends with a recommended sequence: what to change first and why. Some clients run with it themselves. Some ask us to stay. Both are fine.

Who runs qubit

The two of us.

qubit is an agentic-AI studio, a partnership of two firms, Sapphire Advisory and Ikigai AI Ventures. Both of us trained at McKinsey and learned to coach senior people, and both of us build and run AI agents (software that does the work, not just chat) on our own companies every day, this page included. That overlap, builder and coach, is the whole point: you learn the systems from the people who build them, taught by people who coach for a living.

Lucas Zhu
Lucas Zhu
Co-founder · Agentic engineer & operator

Runs Ikigai AI Ventures, his agentic engineering & venture-building studio, and built Frollie OS, the system the FMCG company Frollie now runs on, largely solo in about 60 days by directing a swarm of AI agents. Open-sourced the tooling, spoke at Sydney's AI Mini-Con, and writes it all up in the open.

Agentic engineeringBoard-level strategyOpen-source tooling
Ikigai AI Ventures · ex-McKinsey · HelloFresh ANZ, Dir. Strategy ($1B+ business)
Nick Pinidiya
Nick Pinidiya
Co-founder · Investor, academic & builder

Runs Sapphire Advisory, his advisory firm, and teaches AI to executives as guest faculty at AGSM (UNSW); currently works at ARENA, while building and shipping his own agentic products, ClimatePulse among them. Oxford-trained.

Teaches execs · AGSMInvestorBuilds with agents
Sapphire Advisory · ex-McKinsey · Oxford · AGSM (UNSW) guest faculty · ARENA

Where we’ve trained, taught, built & shipped: McKinsey · HelloFresh · Oxford · AGSM (UNSW) · ARENA · Sapphire Advisory · Ikigai AI Ventures · the AI Mini-Con stage