Master of Business Administration
Victoria University, 2026 · Dean’s Commendation for Academic Excellence
Founders and startups
Working out their model, pricing and the systems they’ll need to scale.
Adrian Hooper
Business, systems and AI advisory for founders and growing businesses.
I help businesses work out what’s actually holding them back, then fix it, from strategy through to working software. Ten years running my own company, twenty in property and construction, and a habit of building the systems that run the business.
$1B
Cumulative building value delivered
1,600+
Projects run through systems I designed
10+
Years as founder and managing director
2
Countries, one distributed team built and managed remotely
Growth problems rarely sit neatly in one box.
A sales problem is often a pricing problem. An operations problem can be caused by the software. And adding AI to a broken workflow usually just gives you a faster broken workflow.
Most advisors see one side. Strategy consultants hand over a deck. Developers build what they’re asked to build. I sit in the gap between the two: inefficient workflows, disconnected systems, manual admin, poor visibility, software that doesn’t fit how the business runs, and new technology adopted without a clear commercial reason.
Growing service businesses
Where the owner is still the bottleneck and the admin is outpacing the team.
Established operators
Who know AI and automation matter but want a commercial reason before they spend.
Business & Growth
- Startup and growth strategy
- Business models, pricing and service design
- Finding growth constraints and operational bottlenecks
- Process improvement and scaling operations
- Founder and management advisory
Software & Business Systems
- CRM and internal systems strategy
- Software requirements and product scoping
- Workflow and systems architecture
- Custom internal applications
- Airtable, n8n, Zapier and React/TypeScript where custom makes sense
AI & Automation
- AI opportunity and readiness assessments
- Practical implementation roadmaps
- Workflow automation
- Internal AI assistants and knowledge systems
- AI-enabled software and business processes
I don’t start with a tool. I start with the business.
How does it make money? Where does work get stuck? What’s taking too much time? What’s stopping it from growing? What should be automated, redesigned, delegated or dropped altogether?
-
01
Diagnose
Understand the model, the workflow and where value leaks.
-
02
Design
Decide what to fix, in what order, and whether software is even the answer.
-
03
Build
Implement it, from a five-minute automation to a custom platform.
-
04
Hand over
Documented, owned by your team, running without me in the room.
From there I can shape the strategy, design the solution and, where it makes sense, build it. You’re not getting a strategy document and a handshake. I’ve designed and deployed CRMs, quoting systems, workflow automations, internal operations platforms and AI tools inside a real operating business, and lived with the results.
Sometimes the answer is custom software. Sometimes it’s a five-minute automation. Sometimes the software isn’t the problem at all. My job is to work out which.
Diagnostic
A fixed-scope review of your operations, systems or AI readiness, ending in a prioritised plan.
Build
Fixed-price delivery of a specific system, automation or internal tool.
Advisory
Ongoing monthly support for founders who want a sounding board across strategy, operations and technology.
Draftee Ops
AI-supported operations platform · 2026
- Problem A distributed team with live margins, time and productivity data scattered across tools.
- Built An internal operations platform that pulls it into one decision surface, with AI summaries that turn the numbers into a written weekly brief.
- Outcome The weekly review collapsed from a multi-hour reconciliation into a dashboard load and a generated brief. Over-budget and stalled projects now surface in the period they occur.
Problem
Running a distributed drafting team across four states and an offshore production floor produces a constant stream of operational questions that never get answered consistently. Which projects are running over budget, where the team’s time is actually going, which drafters are clearing their budgets and which are silently burning margin. The data sat across Xero, time-tracking exports, and project records, and turning it into a defensible read meant hours of manual reconciliation that rarely happened on time.
Solution
Draftee Ops is an internal operations platform built around three linked surfaces. A live Projects view tracks margin, budget consumption, and balance status across every active job. A weekly Operations snapshot reads team hours, attribution, and watch lists for approaching-budget, over-budget, and stale work. A Review layer audits productivity through a drafter performance matrix, quadrant, and project-type pricing calibration. AI summaries sit on top at both period and individual level, giving the weekly review and one-on-one coaching conversations a written starting point rather than a spreadsheet.
Stack
React 19 and TypeScript on Vite 6 for the dashboard surface, Node.js 22 and Express on TypeScript for the API, SQLite via better-sqlite3 for storage, and Google Workspace OAuth for access control. AI summaries run on Gemma 27B served locally through llama.cpp. Self-hosted on internal infrastructure, built and deployed end-to-end in-house.
Impact
The weekly operations review collapsed from a multi-hour reconciliation exercise into a dashboard load and a generated brief. Over-budget and stalled projects now surface in the period they occur rather than at project close, and per-drafter coaching and the quarterly team bonus system run off the same auditable data layer.
DrafteeAI
Self-hosted AI assistant · 2025
- Problem Senior reviewers fielding the same compliance questions over and over.
- Built A self-hosted AI assistant trained on the National Construction Code, answering in team Slack in seconds.
- Outcome Internal requests for information dropped 60 to 70 percent per project. Senior reviewers freed for higher-value work.
Problem
Architectural drafting depends on accurate, up-to-date interpretation of the National Construction Code and state-based planning frameworks. In practice, drafters stop constantly to confirm code requirements, interrupting senior reviewers and searching dense legislative documents. The result is a steady flow of internal requests for information that slow every project down and concentrate compliance knowledge in too few people.
Solution
DrafteeAI is a self-hosted AI assistant fine-tuned on the NCC and related Australian compliance material, embedded directly in the team Slack workspace. Drafters ask questions in plain language and receive specific, citation-backed answers in seconds. The system runs entirely on internal infrastructure, with no client data passed to third-party AI vendors.
Stack
Python and the Slack Bolt SDK for the bot interface, llama.cpp as the local inference server, fine-tuned open-weight model with a custom compliance dataset. Self-hosted on internal hardware. Built and deployed end-to-end in-house.
Impact
Internal requests for information dropped 60 to 70 percent per project. Senior reviewers freed to focus on higher-value work, project velocity lifted across the team, and compliance reasoning kept fully auditable inside the business.
Draftee Markup
Scope and revision management platform · 2025
- Problem Client revisions eroding margin because variations weren’t caught before work started.
- Built A PDF markup platform that logs every change request against the original scope and flags variations up front.
- Outcome Project turnaround time cut by 50 percent, with fewer contested revisions at sign-off.
Problem
In drafting work, scope-creep is the single largest source of margin erosion. Every client revision that is not captured against the original scope is unpaid work, and every undocumented change becomes a potential dispute at sign-off. Manual tracking through email and PDF threads breaks down at any meaningful scale.
Solution
Draftee Markup is a proprietary annotation platform that captures every client revision against the original scope, flags variations for approval before work proceeds, and generates a clean change record at handover. It sits between the drafter and the client, making every scope change visible to both parties in real time.
Stack
Python and PostgreSQL. Custom-built web platform with structured annotation capture, document-version control, and per-project change ledgers. Integrated into the studio’s project management workflow. Built and refined in-house.
Impact
Project turnaround time cut by 50 percent. Client design disputes reduced sharply, with measurable improvement in the proportion of projects reaching sign-off without contested revisions.
doineedapermit.au
Public web tool · 2025
- Problem Owner-builders couldn’t get a straight answer on permits without paying for advice.
- Built An interactive decision tool that turns planning regulations into a plain yes/no, doubling as a qualified lead channel.
- Outcome Shipped independently as a live public product, and as a qualified lead channel for the drafting practice.
I’ve spent my career on both sides of business and technology.
Founder & Managing Director, Draftee
Founded Australia’s first online drafting practice and grew it from sole operator into a national, systems-led business with a team across Australia and the Philippines. Now transitioning operational leadership to the senior team, which is what frees me up for client work.
Co-founder & CEO, Homesky (later Wunderbuild)
Led product design for a full-stack construction platform covering estimating, tendering, quoting, invoicing, CRM and project management for SME builders.
Finance and operational reporting for a private investment group, ERP architecture and cloud migration for a volume builder, and sales roles with major Australian home builders.
Full CV →Writing on business and the economy
Why Australia’s Housing Reforms Won’t Build More Homes
Treasury can rewrite the tax code. It can’t pour a slab.
How Australia Stopped Making Things
An economy built on land, rocks, and debt.
Your Anger is Being Routed
In Australian property, the foreign buyer, migrant, and boomer takes are partially right. None can actually fix the problem.
What One Hormuz Event Cost Australia
The fiscal, household, and structural price of one closed strait.
Bachelor of Business
Victoria University · Golden Key International Honour Society
AI Essentials for Business
Harvard Business School Online
Something in your business feels harder than it should be?
Send me a short outline of what’s going on. I’ll tell you honestly where I’d start, and whether I’m the right person to help.
- [email protected]
- linkedin.com/in/adrnhpr
- Location
- Melbourne, Australia · Australia-wide and remote