Senior, by default
No hand-offs to a junior bench. The person who scopes your work is the person who builds it.
About Balboa Insights
A boutique firm built to deliver — not pitch.
Balboa Insights exists for the nonprofits and SMBs that have been quoted six-figure transformation programs and waited eighteen months for nothing to ship.
Why we exist
Big-firm consulting wasn't built for everyone.
The standard AI-consulting playbook was built for Fortune 500 budgets — long discoveries, big slide decks, junior teams, and roadmaps that quietly outlive the executives who commissioned them.
That model doesn't work for the organizations doing some of the most important work: regional nonprofits, mission-driven operators, and high-growth SMBs that need an answer in weeks, a working prototype in six, and a senior partner who actually picks up the phone.
Balboa Insights is built around that gap. Senior-led, fixed-scope, ocean-clear: pick the right use case, ship something real, leave the team able to run with it.
The boutique advantage
Senior attention, every engagement.
Every engagement is led by a senior principal. That's our operating model — and it's why our clients stay.
Practical over polished
We optimize for working software and decisions made — not for slide quality or presentation theater.
San Diego roots
Born in San Diego. Ocean-clear thinking, California pace, and a network across nonprofit, SaaS, retail, and telecom.
The team
Small, deeply experienced, and growing.
Our model is intentional: a senior-only core that scales through trusted specialists — not a pyramid of juniors.
JP
Senior Principal & Founder
10+ years across AI, analytics & data strategy
Cross-industry leadership across European tech market research, telecom OEM analytics, retail optimization, and nonprofit operations. Currently fractional CDAO at an anchor client. Owns delivery on every engagement.
Senior ML Engineer
Hiring · 2026
Joining the senior bench to lead model design and deployment on Rapid AI Pilots.
See careers →Senior Data Strategist
Hiring · 2026
Driving Data Strategy & Culture engagements with nonprofit and SMB clients.
See careers →
How we work
A few non-negotiables.
Ship something real.
Every engagement ends with working software, not a deck.
Plain-English everything.
If a board member can't follow it, we rewrote it before sending.
Senior on every call.
No "I'll check with my team and circle back." Decisions in real time.
ROI you can defend.
Tied to a number a CFO, ED, or board would actually accept.
Want to see if we'd be a good fit?
A 30-minute call with a senior principal — no junior gatekeeper, no slide deck.