ABOUT SHANNON
I help small businesses and organisations hand their busywork to AI, and keep human judgement where it belongs.
My whole career, across operations, HR, governance and risk, has come back to one question: how do we make sure this gets done right? AI makes that question matter more than ever, and answering it is my job.
Shannon Young, founder of Sqylark
Get in touch โ
THE STORY SO FAR
People and operations by career, with a lifelong love of tech.
I was the kid coding HTML websites from scratch in high school (showing my age!) and I came top of my class in Year 12 IT. Every line of that code is obsolete now, but the love of tech stuck.
I started out in telecommunications, and my career kept pulling me toward operations, governance, risk and people, across education, not-for-profits and government. Part of my week still lives in the not-for-profit sector. In every one of those roles I asked myself the same thing each day: how do we make sure this gets done right? Running a good back office comes down to operations and HR, and that's my home ground.
When I started my own business, the person who'd spent her career keeping everyone else's programs running was suddenly the entire org chart. I sold thousands of digital products with no team, then taught myself to code and shipped a SaaS app solo. Then I hit the wall most AI users hit sooner or later. I had AI open in the next tab, and I was still answering my own emails at 9pm.
So I did what I'd done my whole career with people. I gave my AI proper job descriptions and schedules and trained it the way I'd train new staff. Now my business largely runs itself:
- A SaaS app built from scratch, shipped solo with no dev team
- 500+ founders helped to put AI to work, in their voice and under their control
- An AI office carrying my day-to-day right now, while I do the parts I love
- 0 employees (human ones, anyway!)
Now I build the same thing for founders, and for mission-led teams like the ones I've spent my career inside, so the operation gets carried and the hours come back to the people who should have them.
2x
2026 award finalist
500+
founders helped with AI
3
degrees ยท business, arts (psychology) and a Masters, plus a Generative AI Leader professional certificate
1
app built from scratch, solo, no developers
FINALIST2026 Australian AI Awards ยท AI Innovator, Start Up
FINALIST2026 Australian Professionals Small Business Champion Awards ยท Information Technology
HOW I WORK
Where I stand.
01
You decide how much the AI does on its own.
Some businesses want every task checked before it goes out. Others want routine jobs sent automatically and only the exceptions brought to a person. I build the guardrails first to suit the way you work, so either way a person's judgement sits at the centre of every workflow.
02
If it repeats, you can hand it over.
If you do a job more than a couple of times a month in roughly the same way, it can probably become a workflow your AI runs. The inbox, follow-ups, reporting and content are the obvious ones, and most businesses find a few they'd never have thought of until we go looking.
03
AI belongs to everyone, including people who've never opened it.
Some of you have never touched an AI tool, and some of you want to learn to code properly. You're both welcome here, and I'll help you find where AI gives you the biggest advantage.
ONE LAST THING
A note, from me to you.
If you've read this far, I'd guess there's a business or organisation you care about, and the running of it is taking over the point of it.
You don't need to become technical, and you probably don't need another subscription to manage. The repeat work eating your week is exactly the kind of work that can be handed over safely and to your standard, so you get your time back for the parts only you can do.
Whenever you're ready, I'm here.
Shannon
Founder, Sqylark
READY WHEN YOU ARE
Three ways to work together.
Set it up yourself in an afternoon with The Back Office, hand your content to Sqylark AI, or bring me in to work through your business or organisation one job at a time.
