I spent ten years running a small business. Now I'm helping yours use AI to win.

I'm Sean De Clercq. I built Kickfurther from a Venmo-powered workaround into a $300M+ inventory funding platform. Along the way, I learned what actually breaks an SMB and what AI can fix when you build it right. That's what ScaleForward does.

Book 30 minutes with Sean → See what I build

The difference

Most AI consultants have never run an SMB. I have.

There's a lot of noise right now. Every agency, every freelancer, every enterprise consulting firm is selling AI. Most of them have never carried a payroll, watched a key customer churn, or stayed up at 2am trying to figure out why the cash forecast doesn't match the bank account.

I have. For a decade.

That experience is the whole difference. When I look at your business, I'm not running a framework I read about. I'm recognizing problems I've personally lived through, and applying AI to the places where it genuinely moves the needle, not where it looks good in a demo.

If you run a business doing $1M to $50M in revenue, you're my people.

What I do

Five services. All of them shipped, not pitched.

Fractional AI Leadership

You don't need to hire a full-time Chief AI Officer. You need someone senior who's been in the trenches, can set the strategy, and will stay accountable for the outcome. I plug in as your fractional AI lead, owning the roadmap, running the execution, and making sure your board and your team both know what's happening and why.

AI Automation & Workflows

The boring, repetitive work eating your team's week is exactly what AI is best at. I build production workflows, not demos, that handle lead routing, CRM hygiene, invoice reconciliation, customer follow-ups, cross-platform data sync, and the hundred other small tasks quietly burning 20% of your payroll.

Data & Analytics Infrastructure

Most SMBs sit on a goldmine of data they never use. I build the pipelines, warehouses, and dashboards that turn "I think Midwest sales are soft" into a clear answer in 30 seconds. Then I wire AI on top so your team can ask questions in plain English and get real answers back.

Revenue Ops & Sales AI

The fastest ROI in most SMBs is in the sales motion. I build call coaching systems, pipeline hygiene automations, AI-assisted proposals, and lead qualification agents that help your reps close more without hiring more.

Custom AI Agents & Copilots

When off-the-shelf won't cut it, I build custom. Agents that live inside your workflow, trained on your data, designed so your team actually uses them on a Tuesday afternoon, not just on the day we launch them.

How I work

I ship. In weeks, not quarters.

1

Two-Week Discovery

I spend two weeks inside your business. I shadow your team, map your workflows, and come back with three or four places AI will pay for itself in the first 90 days. You get a written plan either way, even if you don't work with me after that.

2

Build in Two-Week Sprints

Every sprint ends with something live and measurable. Not a slide. Not a prototype. Something your team can actually use on Monday morning. You see value in week four, not month nine.

3

Hand It Off, or Keep Me On

I train your team to own what I build. If you want me to stay on as your fractional AI lead, I stay. If you want to take the wheel yourself, I hand you the keys and walk away clean. I'm not trying to build a dependency.

The standard

The standard I hold ScaleForward to.

For ten years, I ran Kickfurther by asking one question before we shipped anything: would I want to be a customer of this product? If the answer was no, it didn't go out.

Same rule here. Every automation, every dashboard, every agent I build gets held to that standard. If I wouldn't use it in my own business, it doesn't go in yours.

Sean

The gap is widening every quarter.

SMBs that are using AI well right now are pulling away from the ones that aren't. A year from now, the gap won't be closeable with a weekend project. Let's talk before it gets there.

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About

From Sean De Clercq, Founder of ScaleForward.ai

I'm going to tell you the real version, because it matters for understanding why I started this company.

My first business was a merchandising company. It was growing more than 50% year over year. And it died anyway, because I couldn't get the inventory financing I needed to keep up with demand. The banks wouldn't lend. Factoring was too expensive for my margins. I hit a wall that had nothing to do with the quality of the product or the team, and everything to do with the fact that the financial infrastructure for small businesses in America just wasn't built for me.

That failure put me on the path to Kickfurther. I founded it in 2014, moved to Boulder for the Boomtown Accelerator, and spent the next ten years turning it into the leading inventory funding marketplace for consumer product brands. We deployed over $300 million to small and medium businesses, brands you've seen at Target, Amazon, and Aldi. I stepped out of the CEO role in 2025 to become Chair of the Board.

Here's what I learned in those ten years: small businesses don't fail because the owner had a bad idea. They fail because the gap between what the business needs to do and what the team has time to do gets too wide. Something breaks. Cash flow, morale, a key customer, a key hire. And then it's over.

AI, used well, closes that gap. Used badly, it's another expensive project that makes everything worse. I started ScaleForward because I've watched consultants, agencies, and enterprise software companies fail SMBs for my entire career. I think we can do this differently. I think it takes someone who's actually run one.

That's the whole bet.

Sean

My Background, Briefly

Born in Watchung, New Jersey. Philosophy degree from Rutgers. Started in supply chain, grew a merchandising company, watched it die, built Kickfurther. Ten years as CEO, over $300M funded, raised capital from Tom Golisano (founder of Paychex) and others. Based in Buffalo. Mentor at Rutgers Business School. My dad's from Belgium and my mom's from Beijing, hence the name.

Sean De Clercq, Founder

Founder and former CEO of Kickfurther (2014-2025). Currently Chair of the Board at Kickfurther. Ten years scaling an SMB-focused fintech from zero to $300M+ in funding deployed. Entrepreneur mentor at Rutgers Business School. Rutgers Philosophy, Boomtown Accelerator.

Ready to talk?

30 minutes. No deck, no pitch. Just an honest conversation about what AI can do for your business.

Book 30 minutes with Sean →

Services

Five services. All of them shipped, not pitched.

Everything I do is designed to pay for itself inside a quarter.

Fractional AI Leadership

You need senior AI leadership. You don't need another full-time executive salary.

Most SMBs in the $1M-$50M range are in an awkward spot on AI. You're too big to ignore it and too small to hire a Chief AI Officer at $300K+ per year. You end up either pushing it onto an overstretched operator who doesn't have time, or hiring a junior person who doesn't have the authority to drive change.

I plug in as your fractional AI leadership. Think of it as having a CAO on retainer. I own the strategy, the roadmap, the vendor decisions, and the execution accountability. I sit in your leadership meetings when it matters. I report to your board. And when your team needs someone senior to push back on a bad idea or green-light a good one, that's me.

Typical engagement: Ongoing, 10-20 hours per week, with clear deliverables and KPIs.

AI Automation & Workflows

The boring work your team does every day is exactly what AI is best at.

Look at your team's week. How many hours go into copying data between systems, writing the same email in slightly different words, reconciling reports, routing leads, updating records, chasing signatures, formatting invoices? For most SMBs it's 15-25% of total payroll.

I find those tasks and build production workflows that handle them. I'm opinionated but tool-agnostic, typically n8n, Python, and whatever's already in your stack. I don't make you buy a new platform. I make your existing stack work harder.

What I typically build:

Lead routing & scoring CRM sync & hygiene Invoice automation Customer notifications Slack bots AI-drafted emails Cross-platform data flows

Data & Analytics Infrastructure

You already have the data. You just can't use it.

This is the silent killer for most SMBs. The data exists, in your CRM, your billing system, your fulfillment platform, your ad accounts, but it lives in silos, nobody owns it, and nobody can answer a basic question without two hours of manual work.

I fix that. I build data pipelines into a proper warehouse (usually Snowflake or Postgres), layer clean dashboards on top, and wire in AI so your team can ask questions in plain English and get real answers back. The difference between a business that runs on spreadsheets and one that runs on real data infrastructure is enormous, and underestimated.

What I typically build:

Data pipelines & ETL Warehousing Self-serve BI dashboards Natural-language queries Forecasting Anomaly detection

Revenue Ops & Sales AI

The highest-ROI AI work in most SMBs is in the sales motion. It's also the most underinvested.

Your sales team is probably doing a lot of things AI can do better and faster. Writing the same follow-ups. Manually qualifying leads that should've been disqualified hours ago. Missing coaching moments on calls because nobody has time to review them. Updating CRM fields instead of selling.

I build AI systems that take that friction out.

What I typically build:

Call analysis & coaching Pipeline hygiene AI-assisted proposals Lead qualification agents Natural-language CRM Sales forecasting

Custom AI Agents & Copilots

When off-the-shelf won't work, I build custom.

Sometimes the thing you need doesn't exist yet. Or it exists but it's badly built, or it costs 10x what it should, or it won't fit your data model. That's where this service comes in.

I build custom AI agents that live inside your workflow. They're trained on your data, wired into your tools, and designed for the specific person who's going to use them every day. The test is simple: if the person I built it for won't use it on a Tuesday afternoon, I didn't do the job.

What I've built:

Database query bots Customer support agents Financial analysis copilots Procurement agents Internal knowledge search

Not sure which service fits?

That's what the discovery is for. Two weeks, flat fee, and you walk away with a plan either way.

Book 30 minutes with Sean →

How I Engage

I ship. In weeks, not quarters.

A straightforward process designed to get you results fast, not keep you paying forever.

The Discovery

Two weeks. Flat fee.

Here's what happens:

Week 1: I'm inside your business. I talk to your founders, your ops lead, your salespeople, your customer support team. I look at your data. I map your workflows. I understand where your team is spending its time.
Week 2: I come back with a written plan. Three to five opportunities ranked by effort and ROI. An honest read on which ones you should tackle yourself and which ones you need help on. A clear answer on whether I'm the right partner.

You own that document either way. If you walk away after discovery, you walk away with something actually useful.

The Build

Two-week sprints. Flat fee per sprint. Every sprint ends with something shipped.

I don't believe in the three-month pilot. I don't believe in the "we'll circle back in Q3 with the roadmap" consulting cycle. If I can't show you something working inside of 30 days, I've picked the wrong problem.

The Handoff

No lock-in. Ever.

I don't lock you in. At any point, I'll train your team to own what I've built, document everything, and step back. If you want me to stay on as your fractional AI lead, I stay. If you want to run it in-house, I hand you the keys.

Ready to start with discovery?

Two weeks, flat fee, and you walk away with a written plan no matter what.

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FAQ

Questions I get asked a lot.

Who's the ideal client?

SMBs doing $1M to $50M in annual revenue, with a real team (not a solo operator), real data (even if it's messy), and a real budget. Industries I'm strongest in: e-commerce, CPG, financial services, B2B services, and operationally complex businesses generally.

How much does this cost?

Discovery engagements start at a flat fee. Build sprints are scoped after discovery. Fractional engagements are a monthly retainer. I'm not the cheapest. I am the most likely to pay for myself inside a quarter. Book a call and I'll give you specific numbers.

How long until we see results?

Four weeks to first shipped system. Ninety days to measurable business impact. If I can't hit that bar after discovery, I'll tell you and walk away.

Do you replace our team?

No. I build tools your team uses. The goal is to make your best people 2-3x more effective.

What's your stack?

Tool-agnostic but opinionated. I typically work with Claude (Anthropic), OpenAI, n8n, Python, Snowflake, and whatever CRM and ops tools you already use. I don't force you to rip and replace.

Who actually does the work?

I do. ScaleForward is intentionally small. I lead every engagement directly and bring in senior specialists when a project needs it. No offshore handoffs. No junior consultants you've never met.

Where are you based?

Buffalo, NY. I work with clients across North America.

What if we've never used AI before?

Perfect. You haven't built any bad habits yet. Some of the best engagements are with businesses where nothing is automated.

Still have questions?

The easiest way to get answers is a 30-minute conversation. No commitment.

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Contact

Let's talk.

The first conversation is 30 minutes. No deck, no pitch. Tell me what you're trying to fix, and I'll give you an honest read on whether I can help. If I can't, I'll tell you who might.

Email me directly

sean@scaleforward.ai

Book time on my calendar

Schedule a 30-minute call

Sean