Training · Implementation · Capital
Workshops for leadership teams. Hands-on implementation when it counts. Capital for the rare operators building something serious.
Currently accepting two engagements per quarter.
Please email with a request for details.
Michael L. Hauge · Kuala Lumpur
Trainings, lectures, and keynotes delivered at
Who I work with
Same operator, four distinct shapes of engagement. Pick the one that fits your situation.
Consulting & advisory
Multi-site, multi-cohort training programs for large enterprises that want their senior teams to actually use AI well, not just have it described to them. The SAP engagement is the canonical shape: a year-plus program, cohort by cohort, site by site, with iterative improvement and leadership retrospectives at every location.
Featured Work4
What I actually deliver: methodology, structure, and the polish that satisfies a senior buyer.
12 Learning Days, 5 cities across China, 167 participants. NPS of 94. A 12-month executive training program for SAP’s China teams — the multi-site engagement that taught me how to deliver training at scale.
Read the case studyResources I built for MyEO.AI, a MyEO group I founded for entrepreneurs serious about AI. The repo is the engagement: prompts, workflows, deployment guides, all in the open. Implementation work you can read end-to-end.
Browse the repo
Patient Capital. Permanent Value.20+ research notesTwenty-plus investment notes and theses across SEA: family businesses, education, semiconductors, payments, data centers, AI services. The working library behind how I evaluate companies and write checks.
Browse the research
Pertama Partners research on how SEA businesses actually use AI today: where money is being spent, where outcomes are showing up, and what the 2026 inflection looks like.
Read the whitepaperSelected Engagements5
May 2026
Dream Team Group
Reference Client
Hands-on session for the leadership team to move past basic prompting into production-grade Claude use. Real workflows, evaluation rituals, and the prompt patterns the team would carry forward.
April 2026
Open training
Founders + executives across SEA
Open-enrollment intensive for company founders and senior executives on deploying Claude Code in real organizations. Strong cross-sector cohort, working sessions on adoption playbooks, environment setup, and team-ready workflows.
April 2026
Executive team training
15 participants
Within four hours, the team generated over 20 specific workflows that could be reshaped by AI-enabled solutions and meaningful cost savings. The session moved from concept to a working backlog of operational priorities the leadership team could begin acting on the same week.
2019 – 2020
Learning Leadership, SAP China
Fortune 500 enterprise software
12 Learning Days across 5 cities, 167 participants, NPS of 94. The 13-month length is the point: clients who start with a workshop almost always extend into longer-term programs once they see what cohort-based, iteratively-improved training actually compounds into.
Ongoing
Family principal
Malaysian family-owned enterprise
Pertama Capital's family-business work: growth capital paired with operational modernization for businesses that already have durable demand. Quiet partnership, long horizons, AI-era operating discipline brought in without disturbing what already works.
In the field6
Trainings, panels, media, summits. The work happens in rooms, not in decks.
Executive Learning Day
SAP China
Multi-site executive program
SAP China
Keynote
Entrepreneurs' Organization
Speaker
Non-profit fundraising dinner
Fireside chat
Deerfield Academy · Alumni Award recipient
Media interview
CCTV · 对话星品牌 (The Founder)
Engagement Shapes4
Every engagement is scoped to the team and the moment, but most of the work falls into one of these patterns.
Half-day to two-day intensive
A focused session for a leadership team. Diagnose where AI fits, work through real workflows, leave with a usage standard. Often the start of a longer engagement.
8 – 16 weeks
Hands-on rollout work for a function or business unit. Workshops paired with prompt libraries, evaluation rituals, and the embed work that turns capability into habit.
Multi-quarter to multi-year
Retained relationship across cohorts and sites. The SAP shape — iteratively-improved cohort training, site-by-site rollouts, and the strategic AI work that compounds with the team rather than getting bolted on.
Through Pertama Capital or Ventures
When backing is a better fit than billing: first cheques into AI-native founders (Ventures), or patient capital plus operational modernization into SEA family businesses (Capital).
On rates
Michael’s day rates are in line with professional advisory contracts in the Southeast Asia region. Multi-day, retained, and multi-cohort engagements scoped on request.
On outcomes
Kirkpatrick L3 and L4 targets are agreed in writing at kickoff. If we don’t hit them, the next quarter’s retainer is on the table. The job is to land outcomes, not bill hours.
First 90 days
Every engagement scopes to the team and the moment, but the common arc looks something like this. Concrete enough to put on a procurement form; specific enough to hold me accountable.
Days 0–14
01 · Diagnose
Pertama AI Maturity Model assessment with your senior team, plus one-on-one interviews with the people who will live with the work. The output is a written read of where you sit today and what good would look like in 90 days.
Deliverable · Maturity scorecard + Kirkpatrick L1–L4 success targets
Days 15–45
02 · Train the top
First executive workshop or cohort kickoff. We surface the workflows that matter, set the usage standard, and start producing the prompt patterns the team will reuse. No vendor decks; the team works with their own real material.
Deliverable · Executive Learning Day + first version of your prompt library
Days 46–75
03 · Embed
Weekly working sessions with the operators who will own the long-term capability. Evaluation rituals get installed, second-line trainers shadow my delivery, and the team starts running cohorts without me in the room.
Deliverable · Facilitator guide + evaluation rituals + second-line trainers shadowing
Day 90
04 · Measure
Joint review with the original sponsor against the Kirkpatrick L3 / L4 targets defined at kickoff. Decide together whether the program ends here, scales internally, or moves into a longer retained relationship.
Deliverable · 90-day outcomes report + scope for the next quarter (if any)
Accountability
Kirkpatrick L3 and L4 targets are agreed in writing at kickoff. If we don’t hit them, the retainer for the next quarter is on the table for renegotiation. The job is to land outcomes, not to bill hours.
How I measure
Every engagement is instrumented against the Kirkpatrick training evaluation model and, when relevant, the Pertama AI Maturity Model. Same vocabulary your CHRO, CFO, or board already uses.
Training outcomes — Kirkpatrick L1 to L4
Every program is scoped against all four levels at the kickoff, not just the easy ones.
Reaction
Did the participants find the program relevant, useful, and worth their time? Measured end-of-day via short surveys and NPS. SAP NPS of 94 was an L1 outcome.
Learning
Did participants actually gain the skills and frameworks the program targeted? Measured via paired pre/post assessments designed for each cohort.
Behaviour
Are participants applying the learning in their day-to-day work 30 to 90 days later? Measured via manager check-ins and structured self-reports on a defined cadence.
Results
Has the team produced measurable business outcomes attributable to the program: time saved, throughput, quality, revenue, retention? Defined per engagement with the sponsor.
Organisational AI capability — Pertama AI Maturity Model
A 20-question, 80-point self-assessment that maps where your organisation sits today and what the next move actually looks like.
Five maturity stages
AI Aware
Understands AI potential; no production deployment yet.
AI Experimenting
Active pilots; no production systems in place.
AI Implementing
At least one AI system in production with measured KPIs.
AI Scaling
Multiple cross-functional AI systems; governance in place.
AI-Native
AI embedded in core operations as a durable competitive advantage.
Five assessment dimensions
Recent thinking
May 15, 2026
Why I'm putting capital to work from Kuala Lumpur instead of Singapore or San Francisco. And the three things I look for in the operators I back.
ReadApr 22, 2026
When AI sits on top of operations, the family inherits a slightly cheaper version of the same business. When AI sits inside operations, they inherit a different business. Most are choosing the second by accident.
ReadMar 18, 2026
On the discipline that keeps the two legs of Pertama from sharing a commercial sales motion — and what actually happens when training clients become investment conversations later.
ReadMy research and work has been featured in
How I Work4
The alternative to me is one of the big AI consultancies. They ship decks, slide-team rosters, and account managers. I ship the workflow with you, in your tools, alongside the people who will own it after I leave. Four principles guide the work.
Every engagement and every investment starts with what is actually happening, not what the deck says. The diagnosis shapes the rest of the work.
Whether teaching execs, shipping implementation, or deciding to back a founder, I run the workflows myself first. The work earns the right to advise on it.
I would rather be next to the people doing the work than across the table from them. That applies to training engagements, hands-on implementation, and the founders I back.
Every engagement produces durable deliverables: playbooks, prompt libraries, evaluation frameworks. Knowledge that outlasts my involvement and becomes the org's own capability.
About
I am Michael Hauge. I run Pertama Group, a founder-led platform across AI, education, and capital. Four entities do the work: Pertama Partners (AI training and advisory), Pertama Capital (patient capital for family businesses), Pertama Ventures (early-stage backing for AI-native founders), and LearningLeaders (youth communication and leadership development).
I have a particular interest in family businesses. I come out of a fourth-generation U.S. family business myself, and back family-owned enterprises in Malaysia and Singapore through Pertama Capital. On the venture side, fifteen years of backing exceptional founders has produced a portfolio of 100+ investments across six continents (Stripe, Patreon, Eight Sleep, Wonderschool, and others — full portfolio).
I’m based in Kuala Lumpur after twelve years in China and three in Malaysia. Engagements available in English or Mandarin.
One thing worth saying out loud: training engagements never trigger investment outreach unless you ask. The legs reinforce each other intellectually, not commercially.
Credentials & affiliations
A fuller bio is available on request.
Contact
Email with a request for details and I will reply with the next available window.