# Corteus

> Corteus is an AI-native technical venture partner. You know the market; Corteus becomes the technical founding team.

Corteus co-builds one AI-native company at a time. A qualified partner brings firsthand domain knowledge, customer access or controlled distribution, committed attention from a full-time business operator, and committed capital or a credible funding path. Corteus brings validation, product and production-AI engineering, and the initial technical founding capability. An idea alone is insufficient.

An opportunity may originate with an investor, a domain operator, a founder, or inside an established company. These are not separate service lines. Every route must produce the same outcome: a validated company with an accountable operating owner. Corteus is not an AI automation agency or venture fund.

## About

- [Co-build with Corteus](https://corteus.com/venture): Partner qualification, validation, company formation, economics, and the zero-to-one operating path.
- [Operating method](https://corteus.com/method): The public input, evidence, output, and stop-condition contract from partner qualification through production operation.
- [Evidence](https://corteus.com/work): Public engineering artifacts and a clearly labeled internal operating system, without implied client outcomes.
- [Sample opportunity memo](https://corteus.com/sample-build-memo): A hypothetical example showing how market access, architecture, validation, and venture-killing risks are separated.
- [About](https://corteus.com/about): Operating principles and public ownership.
- [FAQ](https://corteus.com/faq): Venture qualification, economics, evidence, and operating boundaries.

## Guides for investors and founders

- [A technical due diligence checklist for AI startups](https://corteus.com/blog/technical-due-diligence-checklist-for-ai-startups): Seven checks a non-technical investor can run, with what good and bad answers sound like.
- [How to evaluate an AI startup's technology before investing](https://corteus.com/blog/how-to-evaluate-an-ai-startup-s-technology-before-investing): The five questions that expose whether the tech is real, and how founders bluff.
- [Fractional CTO vs dev agency vs technical co-founder](https://corteus.com/blog/fractional-cto-vs-dev-agency-vs-technical-cofounder): Cost, incentives, and failure modes of each way to get a technical team.
- [How much does it cost to build an AI product in 2026](https://corteus.com/blog/how-much-does-it-cost-to-build-an-ai-product-in-2026): Real ranges for team, model, data, and run costs, MVP vs regulated production.
- [When not to use AI agents](https://corteus.com/blog/when-not-to-use-ai-agents): The failure modes and the four-part decision test before deploying agents.
- [Questions to ask an AI vendor about security](https://corteus.com/blog/questions-to-ask-an-ai-vendor-about-security): A procurement checklist with good answers and dodges for each question.
- [Build vs buy for AI products](https://corteus.com/blog/build-vs-buy-for-ai-products): When each wins, and the expensive trap in the middle.
- [AI agent platforms compared, before you commit](https://corteus.com/blog/ai-agent-platforms-compared-before-you-commit): Bedrock, OpenAI, Claude/MCP, open source, and custom, compared on lock-in and control.

## Production decision notes

- [Stripe's lesson: why focused AI agents excel in compliance](https://corteus.com/blog/stripe-s-lesson-why-focused-ai-agents-excel-in-compliance): What a bounded compliance workflow shows about product scope and human control.
- [How to tell if an AI agent is actually working](https://corteus.com/blog/how-to-tell-if-an-ai-agent-is-actually-working): Why the final answer is not enough and which evidence a production system must retain.
- [Why AI agents fail in production](https://corteus.com/blog/why-ai-agents-fail-in-production-and-how-failure-detection-fixes-it): Failure detection, traces, and the operating consequences hidden behind one wrong result.
- [Why your AI assistant might be sharing too much private data](https://corteus.com/blog/why-your-ai-assistant-might-be-sharing-too-much-private-data): Privacy failure modes in tool-using assistants and the governance response.

## Feeds

- [RSS feed](https://corteus.com/rss.xml)
- [Sitemap](https://corteus.com/sitemap-index.xml)