ABOUT
Built by an engineer who's been shipping software since 2001.
Unlocked Consulting is a senior-led, founder-run practice based in Munich, focused entirely on AI-first delivery for European and US companies.
FOUNDER
I started writing code in 2001, the year before I finished my computer science degree. Since then I've built software at every scale — small startups and enterprise platforms — across South America and the US. I've shipped systems that handle millions of transactions, led engineering teams from 3 to 50, and watched the same patterns repeat across companies and decades.
The pattern that brought me to AI consulting is this: most companies have a layer of work that nobody questions because nobody sees it. The repetitive emails. The status reports compiled by hand every Monday. The hours spent hunting for a document. The same five questions answered for the hundredth new hire. This work hides on the P&L because it's spread across every team — invisible individually, expensive in aggregate.
AI is the first technology in 25 years that can actually remove this layer cleanly. Not by replacing people. By letting your team stop doing the work they've adapted to, so they can do the work you actually hired them for.
I started Unlocked Consulting because the existing AI consulting market is broken. Big firms quote 90-day discovery engagements. Generic agencies sell ChatGPT seats. Boutiques are too expensive or too junior. None of them ship working systems in weeks. So I'm doing what I've always done — building it myself, the way it should work.
If you're a 20–500 person company in Europe or the US that's tired of AI hype and ready for AI delivery, we should talk.
- Name Helkyn Coello
- Based Munich, Germany
- Experience 25 years in enterprise software
- Current VP of Software Development
- Languages English, Spanish, conversational German
- Network Rotonda Club Munich, American Club Munich
PHILOSOPHY
Five things I believe about AI consulting in 2026.
01
AI strategy decks are theater.
Strategy without delivery is just billable hours. Every recommendation we make is something we're prepared to build ourselves, on a fixed timeline, for a fixed fee. If we can't build it, we don't recommend it.
02
Most "AI projects" should be small.
The biggest gains usually come from automating one specific workflow well — not from rolling out a platform across the org. We optimize for shipping one real thing in 4–6 weeks, then assessing whether to do another.
03
Your team should own what we build.
No proprietary platforms. No lock-in. No ongoing retainer required. Every engagement ends with documentation, code, and access transferred to your team. We're consultants, not vendors.
04
Senior engineering matters more than AI expertise.
The hard part of an AI project is rarely the AI. It's the integration, the data plumbing, the security, the testing, the operability. Twenty-five years of shipping production systems matters more than five years of prompt engineering.
05
If we can't help, we'll say so.
Some companies aren't ready for AI yet — they need basic systems first. Some teams have already done the work. Some scopes are wrong-sized for our model. We'll tell you on the discovery call. No sales script, no soft close.
WHY NOW
The window is narrow. The competition is loud.
2026 is the second year of real enterprise AI deployment — the year where the hype curve and the delivery curve cross. Companies that figured out their AI architecture in 2024–2025 are now compounding from it. Companies still running pilots are falling behind quarter over quarter.
The market is loud right now. Every consultancy has an "AI practice." Every SaaS tool has a copilot. Every conference has a keynote. Most of it is repackaged. Almost none of it ships in weeks.
Munich is a deliberate base. The DACH region has a deep base of mid-market manufacturers, professional services firms, and financial services companies that are mid-AI-adoption — past pilots, into deployment, hungry for senior engineering help. Remote-first delivery means the rest of the EU and US are equally accessible.
Want to work together?
The discovery call is 30 minutes. No deck, no script. Either there's a fit or there isn't.