Hossein Kazemi
Who examines the workflow with you?
I have seen AI conversations go wrong in both directions. Sometimes the technology gets all the attention and nobody asks how the work is actually done. Sometimes the rules get all the attention and nobody asks what the software can realistically do.
Astorna comes from spending years between those two worlds.
Where I come from
I have spent more than fifteen years building technology. For the past nine, I have been a co-founder of Xeco Labs, where we build operational infrastructure for financial firms.
The job has rarely been just writing software. It has meant sitting with people in operations and compliance, hearing how a workflow really runs, and finding the details that did not make it into the first explanation. Then turning that understanding into a system and staying with it as the client grows and the workflow changes.
Many of the firms we work with operate under requirements such as MiFID II, GDPR, DORA, and UCITS. In that environment, regulatory and compliance needs cannot be added as a checklist at the end. They affect what gets built from the beginning.
I also have a master’s degree in Artificial Intelligence from the University of Amsterdam. That background helps me ask what a model is doing with your data, how you would know whether its output is good enough, and where its limits would matter in practice.
Some of the firms I have worked with through Xeco Labs
Index People, AssetCare, Carbon Equity, Bits of Stock, OAKK Capital Partners, RegLab.
What is it like to work with me?
I will ask you to walk me through the workflow as it really happens. I will probably spend more time on the exceptions than the standard cases, because that is usually where the useful answer is.
My role is often to translate between operations, compliance, and technology. I will not pretend that every question can be answered in ninety minutes. If something has not been tested, it goes into the brief as an open question, not a confident conclusion.
I keep the outcome deliberately small: a preliminary assessment, what remains unresolved, and the smallest sensible next step. Sometimes that next step is to leave the workflow alone.
I take the first call, run the workshop, and write the brief myself.
The next step
Start with a free 15-minute call
Tell me briefly which workflow you have in mind. The call is simply to see whether the workshop is likely to be useful. It may not be.
Prefer email? Write to hossein@initialblock.com.