Father
Single father of two. The most consistently assumption-challenging context I operate in. Children are professionally provocative — they have no investment in your current beliefs and will say so directly.
André Daus.
Strategic Opposition · Cologne, Germany
André Daus is a Strategic Opposition consultant and AI investment due-diligence advisor based in Cologne, Germany. I make it professionally uncomfortable to keep avoiding the questions that matter. Not because provocation is a style, but because most organisations already know what they're not asking. They just need someone with a mandate to ask it anyway.
Portrait
- 30 Years in the field
16 of them running my own practice — solo, independent, client-funded since 2010.
- 60+ Podcast episodes
Iconoclast Insights — solo commentary, no guests.
- 2 Brands
Thinking (andredaus.com) and Building (LittleBig.Co).
- Cross Triathlete
The hardest routes lead to the most useful information.
I've always been the one
who asks why.
Not as a rhetorical move. As a reflex. From the time I was old enough to get into trouble for it, I found it genuinely difficult to accept "that's how we do things" as an answer to anything. That discomfort has been professionally useful. It turns out that most organisations — and most of the people running them — are in exactly the same position: there are questions they're not asking, assumptions they haven't examined, and conclusions they've committed to before the evidence was in.
The difference is that I've built a methodology around making that visible. Strategic Opposition isn't contrarianism for its own sake. It's a structured process for identifying the assumptions that are running unchallenged — and then challenging them, systematically, before the market does it for you.
My formative experience was noticing, repeatedly, that the smartest people in a room were also the most confident in conclusions that hadn't been seriously tested. Intelligence doesn't protect you from confirmation bias. It just makes your rationalisations more convincing. The only thing that actually works is structural challenge — someone with a mandate to find what's wrong, who is explicitly not part of the belief system being examined.
That's the role I play. Not consultant. Not coach in the conventional sense. Professional opposition. I'm here to make it impossible to keep avoiding the real question.
Beyond the methodology
What else shapes
how I think.
Thinker
My work IS my mindset. Contrarian, unconventional, and permanently suspicious of anything that hasn't been stress-tested. I document what I find at the intersection of cognitive science and practical decision-making.
Entrepreneur
Over 15 years building and running an independent solo business. No investors, no co-founders, no safety net. Independence is not an accident — it's the condition that allows genuine opposition, because I'm not inside any of the systems I challenge.
Tech Nerd
I build the infrastructure I need rather than accepting what exists. Running my own server stack, self-hosted tooling, and 20+ WordPress sites in production. Technology that creates dependency is technology that undermines independence.
Athlete
Cross triathlon — deliberately. The discipline takes the hardest version of each leg: off-road bike, open water, mountain terrain. The easy path is always available. Choosing it tells you something you should know about yourself.
Maverick
Iconoclast Insights — 50+ episodes of solo commentary on the thinking errors and lazy consensus that quietly run organisations. No guests. No balance. No polite agreement with things that deserve to be challenged.
How I work
Two brands.
One approach.
I deliberately separated my work into two distinct brands. Not for organisational tidiness — because conflating them would undermine both.
andredaus.com is the Thinking Brand. Strategic Opposition coaching and consulting — for leaders and organisations who need someone outside the belief system, with a mandate to find what's wrong before it finds them.
LittleBig.Co is the Building Brand. Technical consulting, WordPress infrastructure, and IT implementation — for organisations that need things built properly, not just advised on. The separation matters: a client who comes to me for technical implementation shouldn't default to seeing me as just another IT consultant when the real problem is a strategic assumption that needs challenging.
Thinking Brand
Strategic Opposition coaching and consulting. Challenging assumptions, identifying root causes, and making it impossible to keep avoiding the real question.
Building Brand
Technical consulting and IT implementation. WordPress infrastructure, security, and digital architecture — built to last, not to create dependency.
Outside thework.
The things that don't appear on a services page but shape how I think about everything that does. Raising two children as a single father gives you a particular kind of clarity about what matters and what doesn't. Cross triathlon gives you a particular relationship with discomfort.
Both are useful in client work. The ability to hold a position under pressure without flinching, to distinguish between discomfort that signals something important and discomfort that's just unfamiliar — these aren't soft skills. They're structural capacities that either exist or don't.
Cross Triathlon
Off-road cycling, open water swimming, mountain running. The hardest version of each leg — because the easy option is always available, and choosing it tells you something.
Single Father of Two
The most assumption-challenging context I operate in daily. Children are natural contrarians — they have no investment in your current beliefs and will say so without strategy.
Iconoclast Insights
60+ episodes of solo commentary. No guests, no balance, no polite agreement. Commentary on the thinking errors that quietly run organisations — published when there's something worth saying.
Ready to work
If you've been avoiding
a question, that's the one we start with.
A discovery call is where we find out which assumptions are running unchallenged in your strategy right now — and what it would cost to keep ignoring them.