Principals
Everyone who works with clients at The River Group has run companies, functions and P&Ls of their own. That is the bar for working under this name.
Blaine Mathieu, founder.
Blaine Mathieu is the founder of The River Group and the author of The River Doesn't Wait, where the firm's method was first published.
He is a multi-time CEO, Chief Marketing Officer and Chief Product Officer, at both large public technology companies and private enterprise-software and industrial startups, and a former Gartner analyst, a job that was vendor-neutral technology judgment with nothing to sell behind it. It still is: he recommends no AI platform, and the implementation stays with the client's own team. His clients have included Ford, SoftBank, ABB, TotalEnergies and China State Grid, among others, and his work has spanned North America, Europe and Asia.
He has followed AI closely for more than three decades. His first published work in the field appeared in renowned AI researcher Ray Kurzweil's 1990 book The Age of Intelligent Machines, and he now builds and runs agentic systems of his own every day. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Connect with Blaine on LinkedIn.
The River Doesn't Wait is endorsed by Morten Wierod, CEO, ABB. About the book →
Two recent conversations with Blaine.
- Surviving the agentic AI surge, on Politely Pushy · Politely Pushy, with Eric Chemi · 15 September 2026
- Why agentic AI programs stall · AI Realized · 13 August 2026
New principals will be announced soon.