Business Consulting in San Francisco, USA

Business Consulting in San Francisco, USA — Business consulting that converts Bay Area users into customers

Today, having business consulting engagements isn't enough for a San Francisco business. Your potential client opens a smartphone on BART, sees three or four similar offers, and decides in 5 seconds which one to engage. If yours is slow, unclear on mobile, or doesn't render correctly under iOS Safari with intermittent BART connectivity — you've lost that customer before they finished reading your headline. That's why investing in quality Business consulting isn't a "luxury expense", it's a direct investment in revenue.

I'm Alex Filiuk, a Senior practitioner with 15 years of experience and a portfolio of 130+ projects. I deliver business consulting engagements for businesses in San Francisco, across the US (San Francisco, LA, Boston, Austin), in Europe (London, Manchester, Edinburgh), and in Ukraine. On this page I've collected what's worth knowing for an Bay Area business owner before commissioning business consulting: how the engagement works, USD pricing brackets, which mistakes destroy ROI, and which 2025-2026 trends actually matter for the Bay Area market.

Why business consulting matters for San Francisco businesses

Bay Area business consulting isn't about generic strategy decks. It's about navigating the specific operational reality of running a digital-first company in the most competitive market on Earth: $40+/sqft retail rents, Bay Area sales-tax complexity, 7-figure-from-day-one customer expectations, talent costs running 30–50% above the national average. Most Bay Area founders don't need a McKinsey-style 80-slide deck. They need a Senior operator who has shipped 130+ digital products and can pattern-match their problem to a concrete plan in 4–6 weeks.

What quality business consulting delivers for an Bay Area business:

• Operator-grade input, not academic. Recommendations grounded in 130+ shipped projects across DTC, SaaS, fintech, e-commerce — not in case-study libraries.
• Faster decisions. Async-first cadence cuts decision cycles from 'next quarter' to 'next sprint'. Bay Area velocity matters.
• De-risked product investment. Pre-product-build strategy can save $100–500K in mis-built features or wrong-platform bets.
• Founder-team alignment. Stakeholder interviews surface internal disagreements before they show up as conflicting briefs to design and engineering.
• Investor-ready outputs. Strategy docs, roadmaps, and competitive positioning that double as Series A / B narrative spine.

Business consulting vs the templated approach

Bay Area has more 'consultants' than coffee shops. Most are pure strategy — slide decks, frameworks, two-by-two matrices, then a handoff to whoever has to actually build. The gap between 'recommendation' and 'shipped product' is where 80% of strategy spend evaporates.

An operator-grade engagement closes that gap by combining strategy with concrete implementation guidance:

• Strategy connected to design. Every recommendation comes with a sketch of the UX implication, not a wave-hand 'and then UX will figure it out'.
• Strategy connected to engineering. Tech stack, integration risk, build-vs-buy, scope phasing — modeled with actual engineering hours, not founder optimism.
• Strategy connected to growth. Channel-economics check before you commit to 'we'll grow on Meta'. Pre-mortem on CAC, payback, LTV assumptions.
• Strategy connected to ops. Hiring plan, vendor short-list, agency vs in-house decision framework — so day-1-after-strategy isn't 'now what'.

If you already have product-market fit and need pure execution leadership, that's closer to product strategy as a fractional engagement than to a one-shot consulting project.

Project types most-requested by Bay Area clients

Across 15 years and 130+ projects, I've noticed Bay Area business categories have their own digital signature. Most-common requests for business consulting:

• Pre-Series-A SaaS founders. SoMa / Hayes Valley / Mission Bay founders deciding between vertical depth vs horizontal expansion before the next raise.
• DTC brands at the $3–10M ARR breakpoint. Oakland / Marina operators deciding when to launch wholesale, retail pop-ups, or international expansion.
• Fintech and regtech. the Mission / FiDi teams modeling compliance burden, integration roadmaps, partner-vs-direct distribution.
• Family-office portfolio companies. Bay Area family offices needing operator-level diligence on a digital-product company before investing or post-acquisition.
• Restaurant and hospitality groups going digital. Multi-location SoMa and the Mission operators building loyalty, ordering, reservations as a unified platform.
• Founder-led content brands. SF-based creators monetizing audiences via SaaS, courses, communities — needing platform-and-business architecture.

Different category, different approach — so I don't ship templates. Every engagement starts with discovery against your actual Bay Area market context.

The business consulting engagement, step by step

I work via a transparent process that 130+ clients have completed end-to-end. Each phase has a fixed deliverable that you receive in your hands. No "wait a month while I design" — you know what's happening every week, with weekly Slack updates and one Zoom sync at 8am Bay Area / 3pm Kyiv.

1. Intake and goal-setting (week 1). 90-minute working session: business state, key decisions on the table, time horizon, success criteria. Async pre-read sent in advance.
2. Stakeholder interviews (week 1–2). 5–8 internal interviews (founders, key hires, advisors), 3–5 external (customers, partners, investors). Pattern-match against past engagements.
3. Data and competitive review (week 2–3). Internal metrics (CAC, LTV, retention, unit economics), external (3–5 Bay Area and US competitors mapped against your positioning).
4. Hypothesis sprint (week 3). Three strategic hypotheses written and stress-tested, each with concrete implications for product, ops, growth.
5. Recommendation draft (week 4). Working session: review of hypotheses, sharpening of recommendation, explicit decision-tree for trade-offs.
6. Final document and roadmap (week 5). Strategy doc (15–30 pages), 90-day operating roadmap, hiring/vendor short-list, investor-narrative one-pager.
7. Implementation support (week 6+). Optional ongoing fractional engagement — weekly working sessions, async Slack support, board-prep help.

What you receive when the business consulting project completes

• Strategy document (15–30 pages): positioning, market thesis, three-horizon plan, decision trees, success metrics.
• 90-day operating roadmap with concrete milestones, owners, dependencies.
• Stakeholder interview synthesis with anonymized themes, surface-level alignments and hidden disagreements.
• Competitive positioning map against 3–5 Bay Area and US peers, with white-space and threat zones.
• Unit-economics model in Sheets / Notion: CAC, payback, LTV, contribution margin scenarios.
• Hiring and vendor short-list tailored to the roadmap (e.g. 'first growth hire by week 60', 'switch DTC fulfillment vendor in Q3').
• Investor-narrative one-pager reusable in pitch decks, board updates, partner conversations.
• Optional ongoing support: fractional advisor model, async Slack, monthly working sessions.

Why hire a Ukraine-based Senior instead of an Bay Area agency

Bay Area has a deep pool of talent — and rates that match. A typical Senior at a SoMa agency: $180–280/hour. A 12-week engagement at a respectable SoMa studio: $80,000–180,000. The work is excellent, but the cost makes it inaccessible for most early-stage startups, mid-sized DTC brands, and bootstrapped B2B SaaS companies.

The remote Ukraine-Senior model gives you:

• 30–60% cost reduction. Same Senior expertise, same deliverables, transparent fixed-fee USD pricing.
• Single point of contact. No account manager, no project coordinator, no creative director "stepping in" mid-call. You talk directly with the person doing the work.
• Async-friendly cadence. The 7-hour gap (Bay Area EST → Kyiv) is a feature: I work while you sleep, you wake up to demos and questions in Slack, we sync 1× per week on Zoom.
• Production-grade quality. Same modern stack (Next.js, React, TypeScript, Tailwind), same accessibility (WCAG 2.2 AA, ADA-compliant), same handoff specs as a top-tier Bay Area agency.
• Transparent fixed pricing. No hourly invoices, no scope-creep surprises. You know the total before we start.

USD pricing model

All projects are quoted as fixed fee in USD, paid 50% upfront / 50% on delivery (or split into milestones for projects > $20K). No hourly invoices. If scope changes mid-project — we re-quote, you approve in writing, and the change is added with a clear delta.

Indicative ranges to set expectations (every quote is bespoke, but these brackets are realistic):

• UI/UX design — landing or simple website (4-6 weeks). $8,000–18,000. Bay Area agency equivalent: $30,000–80,000.
• Corporate website — full design + dev (8-12 weeks). $20,000–45,000. Bay Area agency equivalent: $80,000–250,000.
• B2B SaaS / web app — design + frontend + backend (16-28 weeks). $50,000–180,000.
• UX audit (2-3 weeks). $4,000–9,000.
• Branding — full identity system (8-12 weeks). $12,000–30,000.
• SEO retainer (3-6 months minimum). $2,500–6,000/month.
• Fractional CPO / consulting (15-20 hrs/month, 6+ months). $4,000–8,000/month.

Discounts apply when you bundle services (e.g. design + development + SEO together) — typically 15-25% vs. ordering each separately.

How the async workflow handles the timezone gap

The 7-hour difference between San Francisco (EST/EDT) and Kyiv (EET/EEST) is the biggest concern most Bay Area clients raise — and it's the easiest to solve. The honest answer: most Bay Area startup founders and product teams already work async with Slack-first cadence. The remote-Ukraine engagement just formalises what's already happening internally.

• Daily Slack handoff. When you wake up at 8am Bay Area time, I've already worked 8 hours. There's a thread in #project with the day's progress, demo link (Figma / Vercel preview), and 2-3 specific questions that need your call. You answer over coffee — by 4pm Bay Area time I'm already incorporating your feedback.
• Weekly Zoom sync. One 60-90 minute call per week, scheduled at 8am Bay Area / 3pm Kyiv. We walk through what shipped, what's next, what's blocked.
• Loom for async demos. Instead of scheduling a meeting to "show you what I built", I record a 5-10 minute walkthrough.
• Notion / Linear for tracking. Whatever you use, I'll join. No new tool to learn.
• Emergency Zoom on demand. Critical decisions get a 15-minute Zoom call within 4 hours of request, regardless of timezone.

Cases — Bay Area and US clients in my portfolio

My portfolio contains 130+ projects, including B2B SaaS for US founders, DTC brand sites for Bay Area and LA-based companies, and fintech dashboards for clients on the East Coast. For NDA reasons I can't list every client publicly — but on the discovery call I'll walk you through 5-10 most-relevant cases for your specific niche.

Other services for San Francisco businesses

• UI/UX design
• Web development
• Mobile app design
• Mobile app development
• Branding and logo design
• E-commerce
• CRM / ERP / SaaS
• SEO, Google Ads, SMM, email marketing
• UX audit, CRO
• Business consulting, product strategy

Other US and EU cities I serve

• Los Angeles — entertainment, creative agencies, e-commerce
• San Francisco / Bay Area — B2B SaaS, deep-tech, AI
• Boston — biotech, ed-tech, university spinoffs
• Austin — startups, gaming, tech
• London — fintech, B2B SaaS, creative
• Manchester — northern tech hub, sport-tech, MediaCity
• Edinburgh — fintech, ed-tech, data science

Full list of locations on the "Service Areas" page.

Ready to discuss your Bay Area project?

Fill out the contact form or message me through the channels in the footer. The first 60-90 minute call is free — we'll discuss your business, product goals, indicative scope, USD budget range, and timeline. If you have an existing site / app, I'll do a quick express-review and show you 3-5 issues that can be fixed in the first week, even before signing a full engagement.

Common mistakes Bay Area businesses make commissioning business consulting

• Hiring on hourly rate. A $25/hour practitioner in Eastern Europe is statistically a junior at best. The 30-60% cost gap with Bay Area agencies isn't from hourly rate — it's from removing layered agency overhead.
• Skipping the discovery phase to "save money". A 1-2 week paid discovery is the cheapest insurance against a $50K mistake.
• Not asking about IP and ownership. Get this in writing before kickoff.
• Underestimating the value of single-contact engagement. Talking directly to the person building your product cuts requirement-translation losses by ~40%.
• Treating business consulting as a one-off project. The strongest results come from continuous iteration, not handoff-and-forget.

2025-2026 trends I apply on Bay Area client business consulting projects

• Fractional CMO / CPO over agency-of-record
• Founder-led growth with content as a primary acquisition channel
• Product-led growth + sales-assisted hybrid models
• Tighter CAC discipline post-2022 funding compression
• Vertical SaaS focus over horizontal product expansion
• AI-augmented operations (sales, support, content) as a strategic lever
• Sustainability and ESG as commercial differentiators in Bay Area procurement