I've built companies that deliver great product for thirty+ years, and I build the AI-native products themselves, hands-on. Now I help others do the same.
See what I'm building now →Who I help
I help leaders who have the AI mandate, are shipping faster with AI, and aren't seeing the business move.
Underneath it's the same work - knowing what's worth building, and whether it's working - and it's the part the tools don't do for you.
What I bring
I can hold the product question, the technical question, and the business question at once, without a translation layer.
From software engineer and product manager, up through leading each discipline as CTO and CPO, to running product and engineering together as a CPTO, and on to CEO, three times. Four exits, across every stage from scrappy early-stage to acquisition. So wherever the building gets stuck - between functions or between levels - I have stood on both sides of it.
And I have been inside this from the start: a company I helped build became a case study for the Concierge MVP in Eric Ries's The Lean Startup.
Track record
Not theory. I've built and led across every stage of a software company, from the first product to a stalled one being reinvented. Here's a sample:
I helped take a consumer meal-planning startup from day one to 1.7 million users, running the lean-startup playbook from zero - work that became a named case study in Eric Ries's The Lean Startup and Ash Maurya's Running Lean.
A public-sector data-services firm, stalled after a rocky spin-out from its nonprofit parent and boxed in by the one thing it was known for. I came in as CEO, led the cultural and operational recovery, and put the company on a product operating model I adapted for a services business - using it across our service delivery, our client relationships, and the guidance we gave clients, all aligned to the people those clients ultimately serve. Bookings more than doubled over two years, and the same product-discovery work tested several new product ideas, rejected some, and surfaced one - EdSight - that spun out as its own company.
A founder-led K-12 student-wellbeing startup, freshly funded and scaling past what founder-run product and engineering could carry. I came in as CPTO - running product and engineering together - and installed the product operating model: empowered teams, real discovery, and product decisions moved into the product org. Rhithm was acquired by Securly during my tenure - by then reaching some 1.2 million students across 27 states - and I stayed on through the integration.
The Helper Bees CPO · 2023–2025A growth-stage healthcare-software company scaling through its Series C. I led product and engineering together and installed the product operating model as the company grew. During my tenure the company reached profitability and closed a $35M Series C.
A publicly traded hosting incumbent pushing into cloud, with a product organization that needed to change how it found and pursued opportunities. I came in to apply lean-startup methods across multiple teams - building real discovery into how they worked, drawing on signal from the company's own customer-facing staff and from current, prospective, and adjacent customers alike. I coached teams to operate as a blend of product management, design, and engineering, and brought marketing into the discovery work alongside them. Several teams put that discovery into practice and found new growth - and the same evidence stopped more than one new product or new direction before anyone built it. The executive team took up the approach too, carrying it into the CEO's weekly leadership meeting.
How I work
I start by understanding, not prescribing - I learn what's actually happening, rather than walk in with a prescribed answer. I locate the hard "what to change" decisions in evidence and discovery - not in opinion or edict - and I keep the work pointed back at the people the company is serving.
I look beyond the product team to everyone doing product work across the company - and AI widens that further, because a customer-success manager or a designer can now test real demand and stand up a working prototype that used to take a full team.
When something's stuck, I look for what's stopping progress - what would have to be true for this to work - before reaching for "do more." I read the human systems as closely as the org chart - what's really happening between people, not just what's on the whiteboard.
Then I push to prove it end to end before optimizing anything - one real product, one real customer outcome, all the way through, before tuning the parts. Getting a single instance to work end to end is the hard part; once it exists, making it better is the easier part.
When I come in, I embed for a bounded window and transition the company into the right permanent structure - mission-defined and scope-bounded, with capability transfer on the back end. What that looks like is scoped to where the company is: sometimes a fixed-scope read or coaching, sometimes a fractional or interim CPO/CTO seat, sometimes an advisory or board role, sometimes stepping in to lead.
Insights
May 28, 2026
The tangle here is in post-PMF software companies (post-fit through Series B, or service companies) where the founders are the right people, …
May 28, 2026
The tangle here is in revenue-stage incumbents under exogenous pressure (platform shift, regulatory regime change, customer-expectations …
May 14, 2026
For the first time, the disadvantages of being an incumbent appear to be inverting into an unfair advantage. GenAI is collapsing the cost to …
Let's Talk
If I can help, I'm easy to find. A short conversation, peer to peer - no pitch, no intake form.
