John Knox Results

What operating CEOs
hire John for.

Twenty-five years across MedTech, B2B SaaS, marketplaces, and semiconductors. Class III medical devices through clinical trials. Mobile platforms serving millions. Two books, forty essays, and a weekly closed-door peer group founders keep returning to.

By the Numbers

The shape of the work

25Years operating
7Industries shipped
17+Roundtables held
200+CEOs in Network
2Published books
40+Essays on AI

Mobile platforms shipped to millions at 99.9% reliability. Billions of dollars in commerce enabled. Class III medical devices through clinical trials.

In their words

Operators who’ve worked with John

This is gold. The way John broke it open with the idea of mapping cleanup areas and overlapping them with feature work really clicked. That map gives both me and whoever comes onboard a clear starting point and a way to make progress without needing to pause everything for a massive overhaul. It also helps frame the work in a way that feels achievable and grounded in real product needs.

Joel-Olivier (Jobo) Baussan Co-founder, CargoFax

John is a seriously impressive individual. As an app developer, has produced beautiful, functional and popular apps. As a person, he is one of life’s stars. I met him through the Business of Software Conference where he has been a regular attendee for many years. Over the past few years he has also ‘sponsored’ attendance at the event for recent engineering graduates with the intention of giving someone an introduction into the world of software. Extremely generous with his time and energy.

Mark Littlewood CEO, Business of Software Conference

John brought together a group of people for a 1 hour call that provided more value than a week’s worth of one-off conversations.

Jonathan Zacks Founder & CEO, GoReminders

As a TinySeed mentor, John has provided great insight into many product and business questions I’ve had. We also had several conversations about hiring and managing engineers, and his experienced perspective as an engineering leader was incredibly valuable.

Matt Zunert Founder, DebugBear

John has always been quick to respond to our inquires with his wealth of knowledge and network of subject-matter experts. He’s transparent on what he can provide advice on and when we would recommend another expert. I’m appreciative of all the help he’s provided over the years.

Schoneck Shoaf COO & Co-founder, 1 Second Everyday

John is a fantastic software engineer, he gets it done right. I enjoy working with and knowing him. John understands and appreciates good user experiences; he’s a designer’s best friend! Aside from enjoying working together, I enjoy intellectually stimulating conversations with him.

Jesse Guerrero Design Manager, Horizon Metaverse @Meta

I’m a super-fan of everyone and everything related to John and BoS.

Jason Cohen Founder, WP Engine
The framework

Growth shows in the branches.
It’s decided in the roots.

Boards watch the visible signals. The causes sit underground — and stay invisible until someone goes looking. John makes the hidden roots visible, then fixes them.

What’s visible to leadership For example: revenue, churn, sales funnel, headcount, culture, roadmap. What’s invisible to leadership For example: process gaps, technical debt, defect rates, informal communication, cross-team alignment, feedback loops, hiring bar, team morale, customer understanding, strategic clarity, the path to churn, tech strategy.

The method Fifty questions before a single recommendation — diagnose before you prescribe. Then fix it at the root, so the problem stays solved by your team’s own processes — not held together by a continuous consulting bandage.

Fixing hidden tech misalignment, unlocking growth.

The operator network

The same operators keep showing up

Seventeen weekly sessions of the Executive AI Roundtable — closed door, Chatham House Rule, capped at eight CEOs per call. Same operators return month after month. Four of them, on the call:

What’s really great is that you’ve got smart entrepreneurs turning up. It’s an inside track on what people are experiencing in their organizations.

Mark LittlewoodCEO, Business of Software

John’s AI Roundtables are a great place to meet with like-minded practitioners talking through how they’re approaching AI. What’s working and what isn’t, without all the hype.

Nathan TylerCEO, BlinkMetrics

It was an absolute joy. It’s a fun group you set up — I got to learn from everyone here.

Ray DeckFounding Mentor, statechange.ai

Fun and insightful.

Alicia RojasTelos Labs
Speaking & community

Talks, sponsorship, and operator communities

Public talks, recurring memberships, and the founder communities John works inside.

Standing affiliations

TinySeed

Limited Partner and active mentor. Working with B2B SaaS founders inside the accelerator.

Business of Software

Attendee for over a decade. Scholarship sponsor for engineering-graduate attendance for the next generation of operators.

MicroConf Europe 2025

Speaker, Istanbul. Delivered “Networking for Founders” to the European bootstrapper community.

MedTech Connect

Founder of the network connecting medical device executives, investors, and advisors.

Engineering proof

What John has shipped

A sample of the engineering work behind the advisory practice. Anonymized where clients ask; named where they don’t.

Anchor case

A wearable hardware platform: from crashing in seconds to product-market fit

A wearable hardware startup brought John in because their previous consultants couldn’t get the system stable enough to test with early adopters. It was crashing every few minutes. The first thing he did was build the diagnostic tools and the simulator the team was missing — so they could finally see what was failing and reproduce it in isolation. Working with their quality engineer, they fixed crashes one by one. Within a few months it went from crashing in seconds to running for hours.

Once it was reliable, partners started using it in real conditions — and that exposed the real product challenge: the lab had never required them to synchronize more than a handful of devices, but field deployments meant simultaneous monitoring at much larger scale. John designed simulators that mimicked real-world deployment conditions, which let the team iterate fast on each performance challenge. They took the system from synchronizing 5 devices simultaneously to 50 — a clean 10x. The platform reached product-market fit, and the partner roster expanded on the back of it.

StabilitySeconds → hours
Scale10× device sync
OutcomePMF, new partners

Class III medical devices

Concept through clinical trials. The regulated edge of the industry, end to end.

99.9% reliability at scale

Mobile platforms serving millions of users. Multiple Apple App Store features along the way.

Billions in commerce

Marketplace and platform infrastructure (HomeAway / Vrbo and others) processing transactions at meaningful scale.

Go deeper
AI Workshop for CEOs

Bring this thinking to your stack

The Workshop is where the same thinking gets applied to your business. Three hours with John and seven peer CEOs, plus a private 1-on-1 mapped to your stack. Eight in the room, no more. If it isn’t worth every second, every dollar refunded.

Reserve Your Seat

Or talk to John about an advisory engagement — 3 to 5 active at any time.