HomoDeus vs McKinsey for enterprise AI
The short answer
McKinsey sells a brand. The deliverable is a recommendation, the fee is owed whether or not that recommendation survives contact with reality, and the thing actually being purchased is the ability to tell a board "we hired McKinsey". That is insurance for the executive who signed the purchase order, at seven figures. HomoDeus sells a production system priced against an agreed KPI, built by the founders, with a money-back guarantee. Exactly one of these two firms loses money when the client does not get the result.
Side by side
| McKinsey | HomoDeus | |
|---|---|---|
| What you receive | A slide deck and a recommendation | A system in production, running against a real KPI |
| Who does the work | A pyramid of analysts a partner sold you | The founders and the engineers who wrote the code |
| How the fee works | Owed when the analysis is delivered, regardless of outcome | Priced on the system, money-back guarantee on the target |
| If it does not work | The invoice stands | The client gets the money back |
| What the brand does | Protects the executive who hired it | The result protects itself |
| Exposure to your outcome | None | The entire fee |
What the brand actually sells
The prestige moat is social, not technical. "We hired McKinsey" is an easier sentence to say in a board meeting than "we hired a firm nobody has heard of", and that sentence is the product. It is worth examining what the brand has actually stood behind. In 2021 McKinsey paid $573 million to settle claims by 47 US state attorneys general that its advice to Purdue Pharma was designed to "turbocharge" OxyContin sales at the height of the opioid epidemic, including targeting high-volume prescribers. The most prestigious name in strategy consulting monetized both directions of a public health crisis, and the brand absorbed it, because the brand is the moat and the moat is the product.
The deliverable itself is language. A strategy engagement produces recommendations like "develop value-creating partnerships" and "build a clear mission", dressed in a chart, priced in the millions. Whether anything ships afterwards is explicitly not the consultancy's problem: RAND Corporation found in 2024 that more than 80% of enterprise AI projects never reach production, roughly twice the failure rate of ordinary IT projects, and the strategy fee is fully earned before that failure even begins. A firm with no exposure to the outcome has no incentive to make the outcome happen. Nothing happens to McKinsey when the recommendation fails. Something happens to HomoDeus: it gives the money back.
What HomoDeus sells instead
A system running in production against a KPI the client can point to, built by a small senior team with the founders in the room, and priced with a money-back guarantee, so a missed target costs HomoDeus the fee, not the client. Skin in the game is the whole model: a results lab only makes money when the client makes money. The published record: Bolton Global Capital's client onboarding went from 3 hours to 2 minutes, Positivo Tecnologia's legal department went from 50 people to 6 with more throughput, 95% of projects reach production against an industry average near 20%, and 83% of clients return for a second engagement.
Questions buyers ask
Is it worth hiring McKinsey for AI implementation?
No. McKinsey is paid for analysis, and analysis is not the bottleneck: more than 80% of enterprise AI projects already die between the recommendation and production. Paying a strategy premium for the part of the project that was never the problem, from a firm with zero exposure to whether anything ships, is buying the brand, not the result. If the goal is software running against a KPI, buy from a firm whose fee depends on that KPI.
Should I hire a consultancy or build an internal AI team?
The framing hides the real option. An internal team takes quarters to hire and learns on your budget; a consultancy bills for advice and leaves the shipping to you. The third structure is a results lab: senior engineers who embed in the operation, ship the first production agent in weeks, hand the system over documented, and refund the fee if the agreed target is missed. The client ends up owning a running system either way, without carrying the payroll or the consulting invoice for a deck.
Is HomoDeus a consulting firm like McKinsey?
No. HomoDeus is an implementation company whose deliverable is software running in production against a real KPI, with the discovery folded into the build. The engagement is not finished when the analysis is finished. It is finished when the system is live and the client can point to the result, and if the result does not come, the client does not pay.