About Pine & Birch
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A Technology & AI Consulting Firm That Builds What It Recommends
Pine & Birch Consulting Group is a technology and AI consulting firm based in Newmarket, Ontario, serving the Greater Toronto Area, Canada and the United States. We design, build and run the systems small and mid-sized businesses depend on — AI agents and automation, custom software and platforms, North America e-commerce operations, digital marketing, cloud infrastructure and business strategy — with senior engineers and strategists who stay through execution.
The firm was built on a simple observation: most consulting fails at the handoff. A deck gets delivered, the consultants leave, and nothing ships. So we work differently. We embed with your team, take ownership of outcomes, and stay until the system is running — whether you are a founder scaling past your first systems, a manufacturer replacing a six-figure legacy platform, or an established company putting AI to work for the first time.
Everything we recommend, we can build. That is the difference between advice and a result.
Discover, Design, Build, Run
Discover
Structured sessions with the people who do the work, on site where it matters. Output: a map of what actually happens today, the constraint to attack first, and a scoped, costed proposal.
Design
Option models, data flows, page designs and — for AI — the guardrails: what the system may do alone, what needs a human, what gets logged. Reviewed as finished pages and prototypes, not wireframes.
Build
A small senior team ships in two-week increments you can click. Proven technology chosen for your team's ability to maintain it; you own the code, the infrastructure and the documentation.
Run
Staged launch, then we stay: hosting, monitoring, updates and the next capability. Systems that are not maintained fall out of step with the business; ours are maintained.
What Makes Us Different
Senior people, not analysts learning on your budget
Every engagement is led by people who have built and run these systems themselves. There is no junior bench.
We build what we recommend
Strategy and delivery are the same firm, so plans are sized by the people accountable for shipping them and nothing is recommended that cannot be built on your budget.
Embedded, not advisory
We work inside your team — your Slack, your meetings, your systems — and measure our work by what changes in the business, not by hours billed.
AI with guardrails
Grounded in your data, human sign-off where errors are costly, every action logged. We would rather ship one AI system people trust than five pilots that never leave a deck.
Operators, not just consultants
We have run our own e-commerce businesses selling into North America for more than ten years. Advice from people who have done it with their own money is the only kind worth paying for.
Local and in person
Newmarket, Ontario — we visit factories, warehouses and showrooms across the GTA. Some problems only show themselves on the floor.
Hans Yang
Founder, Pine & Birch
I started as an engineer, not a consultant — building front-end and product work at Toronto startups, including e-commerce and loyalty platforms used at real scale. That background shapes how I think about consulting: a recommendation only matters once it ships and holds up under real usage.
Pine & Birch exists because most technology advice stops short of that. Firms hand over a slide deck and a roadmap, then leave the actual build — and the actual risk — to the client. We do the opposite: senior people embed with your team, write the code, configure the systems, and stay accountable for the outcome, not just the plan.
That's especially true with AI right now. Every business is being told to "adopt AI," but very few are told which problem it should actually solve, or what happens when the model is wrong. I'd rather ship one AI system that's genuinely trusted and used every day than five pilots that never leave a slide deck. That bias toward working software over impressive demos is the throughline across everything we build.
Want to talk through a specific problem? Reach out through our contact page — I read every inquiry myself.
- 9service lines, from AI agents to strategy
- 5published case studies with real outcomes
- 42free tools we built and give away
- 92file converters, free, no signup
- 74sample-file formats for developers
Work We Can Show You
Explore Our Services
Digital Transformation & Legacy Modernization
SMB digital transformation consulting: turn paper and spreadsheet workflows into reliable systems and replace costly legacy ERP/WMS at a fraction of the cost.
Learn more →Custom Software & App Development
Custom software development in Toronto: web platforms, mobile apps and SaaS products by senior engineers — faster and cheaper with AI-assisted delivery.
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AI Training for Employees & Teams
Corporate AI training and upskilling for teams and individuals — hands-on, built on your real workflows, with a learning system that keeps skills current.
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SEO, AI Search & Growth Marketing
Digital marketing that pays for itself: SEO, AI search optimization (GEO), paid ads and conversion optimization — reported in leads and cost per acquisition.
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Cloud Infrastructure & Cybersecurity
Managed IT and cloud services for SMBs: cloud migration, cybersecurity, and tested backup and disaster recovery — so no single server or person is a risk.
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Business Strategy & Operations Consulting
Strategy and operations consulting from a firm that builds what it recommends: process redesign, financial analysis and an AI-ready operating plan.
Learn more →AI Agent Development & Automation
Custom AI agents for business, built and deployed by Pine & Birch: a working pilot in weeks, then a secure production system your team relies on. Book a call.
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Venture Studio: 0-to-1 Product Builds
Have a strong idea but no technical co-founder? Our venture studio designs, builds and launches it with you — engineering, architecture and industry access.
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North America E-commerce Consulting
Launch and scale an e-commerce business in Canada and the US with a team that has run its own for 10+ years: sourcing, Amazon, Shopify, compliance, finance.
Learn more →Businesses in the GTA, Across Canada and the US
Our clients are owners and operators of small and mid-sized businesses: manufacturers and distributors modernizing paper-based or legacy operations, professional services firms putting a decade of documents to work with AI, logistics companies giving staff an AI colleague in Slack, retailers and e-commerce sellers growing into North America, and founders who need a technical partner rather than a vendor.
We are in Newmarket, at the north end of the Greater Toronto Area, and much of our work is in person across the GTA — Toronto, Markham, Richmond Hill, Vaughan, Mississauga and the surrounding region. Clients elsewhere in Ontario, Canada and the United States get the same senior team remotely, with site visits where the problem lives on a factory or warehouse floor.
802 Stonehaven Ave
Newmarket, Ontario L3X 2G2, Canada
+1 709 697 5510
info@pnbconsult.comBook a Free Consultation
Questions People Ask Before Working With Us
Where is Pine & Birch based, and where do you work?
We are based in Newmarket, Ontario, in the Greater Toronto Area, and work with clients across the GTA, Ontario, the rest of Canada and the United States. Local clients get us on site; everyone else gets the same senior team remotely.
What kind of companies do you work with?
Small and mid-sized businesses, professional services firms, manufacturers, distributors, retailers and founders — typically companies that need senior technology execution without hiring a full in-house team. Recent work spans logistics, manufacturing, wholesale distribution, interior design and e-commerce.
Do you only advise, or do you build?
We build. Every engagement is led by senior engineers and strategists who write the code, configure the systems and stay accountable for the outcome. When our strategy work recommends automating a workflow or replacing a system, the same team delivers it.
How does an engagement start?
With a free consultation, then a short discovery — usually one to four weeks — that produces a scoped, costed proposal with a real timeline. You see what version one will and will not do before anyone writes code. Most projects then ship in two-week increments you can use.
How do you use AI in your work?
Two ways. We build AI systems for clients — agents, retrieval-based knowledge systems, workflow automation — always grounded in the client's own data, with human approval wherever a mistake is expensive and an audit trail of every action. And we use AI-assisted engineering ourselves, which is why custom software now costs a fraction of what it did.
How do you charge?
Mostly fixed-scope proposals for defined projects, with a light monthly retainer available afterwards for evolution and support. For venture-studio work we can trade a reduced fee for a modest equity or revenue-share position. We do not bill open-ended hours against an undefined scope.