The Island is home. The work goes further.
I'm Francis Hall. I live in the Cowichan Valley on Vancouver Island and build the systems, automations and AI that established businesses run on, for clients here first and anywhere the work takes me.
At a glance
First-class honours
IT Management for Business, Northumbria University, with a placement year at IBM.
IBM 100% Club
Five years in enterprise account management, selling analytics and cloud.
On the Island since 2019
Home is a small homestead in the Cowichan Valley.
Founder since 2022
Co-founded Sensemillier, a platform built and run on AI.
Why here
I moved to Vancouver Island in 2019 after falling for British Columbia and deciding this was where I wanted to live and work. My family and I live at Riverdaughter Acres, a small homestead in the Cowichan Valley, where I'm slowly turning a field into a food forest and hosting guests who want a quiet weekend in the trees. I build for businesses that have been running for years and have outgrown the spreadsheets and inboxes that got them here.
What I build for them is the system underneath the business: the thing that holds the orders, the approvals, the bookings, the customers, so that the week stops depending on one file and the person who understands it. Where AI does part of the work, I build that too, with a human in charge.
What I've built and run
In 2022 I co-founded Sensemillier, a national education and technology company built around an advanced, pioneering cannabis platform: grading, interactive courses, multi-account access and e-commerce. I lead strategy, operations and fundraising, and I built the platform and the website myself. The business is built and run on AI across software, process and strategy, which is how I know what good systems give back: time for the work only people can do, and features shipped faster at a fraction of the cost.
I also built the Riverdaughter Acres site, with accommodation bookings, a certificated online course and forest therapy scheduling. And I'm in discovery now on a curated marketplace for high-value handmade goods, with adjudication, a reviewer panel and AI-written listings.
Before that, IBM
I graduated from Northumbria University with a first-class honours degree in IT Management for Business, which included a placement year at IBM and the IBM Extreme Blue internship. I joined IBM full-time on graduating, went through the graduate programme, and spent five years at IBM in London, 2014 to 2018, as an enterprise account manager in the Analytics Software division.
I sold analytics and cloud into life sciences, government and financial services. I earned the 100% Club award for exceeding targets, and I closed the first SaaS cloud sale into the UK Cabinet Office, which taught me what it takes for a serious organisation to trust something new. Mostly I learned to translate complicated technology into human terms, on conference stages and in boardrooms.
How I work
A weekly show and tell
One 45 to 60 minute call a week, from the first day of discovery to the last day of the build. I show real output, you react, and the work adjusts while it's still cheap to adjust.
Every decision logged
Decisions, feedback and open questions are dated in a shared log. Later questions are settled by the record, not by memory.
You get me, not an account manager
The person who scopes the work is the person who builds it, and the person you email when something comes up.
A reliable pair of hands
I take care of the people I work with. Documentation and a handover are standard, so you are never dependent on me, and I stick around after launch if you want me to.
It's just me, which I think is the good news: the person you talk to on the first call is the one building the thing, and the one who answers when you email about it six months later. When a project calls for photos or video, I bring in a trusted photography and video partner, a friend whose camera makes everything look better than I could, and you'll always know exactly who's involved and why.
Off the clock
Passionate about regenerative gardening, foraging and all things nature. The homestead is where most of the non-screen hours go.
Regenerative gardening
Building soil and growing food at Riverdaughter Acres, the homestead my family and I run in the Cowichan Valley.
Foraging
Mushrooms in season, wild greens in spring, and most other things that involve being outside with a basket.
Forest therapy walks
Guiding slow, sensory walks in the trees for guests at the homestead.
Book a call
A free call of twenty to thirty minutes about the problem, the rough scope, whether it fits, and what the next step would be. If it isn't a fit, I'll say so.
Book a call