About Strong Tide

Built for the teams the big firms overlook

Strong Tide exists because the gap between “we should be doing something with AI” and “we know exactly what to ship on Monday” is where most middle-market companies get stuck.

We close that gap — with senior operator experience, vendor-neutral advice, and engagements that start in 48 hours.

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The thesis

The fourth wave looks a lot like the first three.

Every technology wave arrives the same way. The commercial internet in the late 1990s. Cloud in 2012. Data platforms in 2018. AI in 2024. Each one showed up with overwhelming hype, genuine opportunity, and a vendor ecosystem racing to sell before anyone understood what was actually useful.

The companies that came out of each wave ahead weren’t the ones with the biggest budgets or the earliest pilots. They were the ones with the right operator in the room — someone who could separate real signal from vendor noise, sequence the work that actually mattered, and ship outcomes instead of slide decks.

For 25+ years, that caliber of leadership has lived inside the Fortune 500 — because that’s who could afford it. Strong Tide was built to bring it to everyone else.

What we believe

Four beliefs that shape every engagement.

AI is a business problem, not a tech problem

The companies winning with AI aren’t the ones with the most models. They’re the ones who figured out which decisions to change, and in what order.

The middle market has been underserved

Tier-1 consultancies chase $10M+ engagements. Freelancers don’t have the enterprise pedigree. Offshore shops don’t have the judgment. The gap is real — and it’s getting wider as AI accelerates.

Vendor-neutral isn’t a tagline

We don’t have reseller margins, partnership quotas, or preferred-stack bias. If the right answer is “don’t build this — buy it,” we’ll say so.

Speed over ceremony

Engagements start in 48 hours. Scopes are one page. Reviews happen monthly and measure business outcomes, not hours billed.

Background

Four waves of experience. One kind of judgment.

Strong Tide is founded on 25+ years of executive leadership at the intersection of enterprise technology and business transformation — inside AWS during the enterprise cloud build-out, inside three cloud and data consultancies scaled to exit, and inside Fortune 500 media through the digital transition.

That perspective shows up in how we work. We know which vendor promises survive contact with reality, which architectures age well, and where the real unlocks are for companies between $5M and $200M in revenue — because we’ve led those transitions before, just in different categories.

AI is new. Leading a company through a technology wave isn’t.

25+

Years at the intersection of enterprise tech & business transformation

Technology waves led from inside

Iconic brands transformed and served across cloud, data, and AI

The founder

Built by an operator who has done this before.

Chris Resch

Founder, Strong Tide AI

Chris has spent 25+ years building and leading technology businesses at the intersection of data, cloud, and AI. He has been an operator inside Fortune 500 media, a leader at AWS during the enterprise cloud build-out, and the executive who scaled three cloud and data consultancies through their growth and exit cycles.

He founded Strong Tide AI to bring that operator experience to middle-market leaders who own the AI agenda and need a partner who can move from strategy to shipped outcomes.

Career arc

Hearst

Technology Leadership

AWS

Principal Practice Manager

2nd Watch

EVP, Cloud Solutions

66degrees

GM and Chief Revenue Officer

Indicium

Chief Revenue Officer

Strong Tide AI

Founder