I've spent 25 years inside the machine — building products, advising founders, investing in early-stage companies, and sitting on boards where the hard conversations happen. Seven industries. Fifteen products to product-market fit. The pattern I keep seeing is the same.
The technology works. The team is talented. And the company is still stuck.
The Problem Nobody Names
Most founders and boards understand what to build. What they misdiagnose is why it's not working. They blame the roadmap, the engineers, the market timing. But the real issue is almost always a misalignment between technology strategy, customer reality, and business goals — and it's invisible until someone from the outside names it.
Your engineering team is overwhelmed. Your product roadmap is disconnected from customer feedback. Cash is burning on features nobody uses. These aren't engineering problems. They're alignment problems. And they don't show up in your dashboards until the damage is done.
I've been inside this exact situation more times than I can count — in MedTech, B2B SaaS, IoT, AI-enabled companies, and a few industries you wouldn't expect. That cross-sector experience is the advantage. I spot patterns your industry-native advisors miss because I've seen them play out somewhere else first.
How I Work
I diagnose before I prescribe. Every engagement starts the same way: I ask 50 questions before I give 1 recommendation. This ensures we're solving the right problem, not the obvious one.
I speak both languages. I can tell your engineers why customer behavior matters and tell your sales team why technical debt is a growth problem. Most advisors do one or the other. I've done both — from writing production code to sitting in board meetings where the founder is deciding whether to fire a VP of Engineering.
Who This Is For
Founders who've hit product-market fit but can't scale. Your engineering team is talented but overwhelmed. Your roadmap has too many priorities and not enough conviction. You need someone who's been in the trenches and can help you fix it — without replacing your entire team.
Board members and investors who sense something's off. Revenue is soft. Churn is higher than it should be. But nobody's giving you a straight answer. I'll tell you what's actually happening beneath the surface — the kind of honest feedback that hurts to say and hurts to hear.
Leaders navigating AI adoption. You're watching competitors announce AI initiatives and wondering where to place your own bets. But the prizes for buzzword bingo are small. I help companies deploy AI where it actually moves the needle — internal operations, team productivity, process automation — not flashy demos that never ship. I host a weekly Executive AI Roundtable for founders working through exactly this.
What 25 Years Looks Like in Practice
I don't hand you a framework and disappear. I've done this work.
I've taken a product that crashed every 10 minutes and turned it into a 10x performance gain. Not by rewriting everything — by diagnosing the three things that actually mattered and ignoring the rest.
I've led products from nothing, through trials, and into FDA submission — the kind of regulatory work where getting it wrong costs you a year and getting it right means you can actually sell.
I've helped B2B SaaS founders figure out hiring, churn, and when to fire a feature. As a TinySeed mentor, I work with early-stage SaaS companies navigating exactly these decisions.
I've built and shipped iOS apps with BLE hardware integration — the kind of firmware-to-cloud work where you can't fake competence because the device either connects or it doesn't.
I invest in early-stage MedTech and AI companies and sit on advisory boards, which means I'm not just giving advice — I have skin in the game.
Why I Keep the List Short
I maintain 3-5 active advisory roles at a time. Not because exclusivity sounds impressive — because shallow involvement produces shallow results. If I'm on your board, I'm in your Slack, I know your engineers by name, and I've read your last three customer interviews.
I don't advise on what to do. I've done it. I've held engineering standards, managed the difficult conversations, and shipped the painful fixes. That's the difference between an advisor who's read about your problem and one who's lived it.
If any of this sounds like the conversation you need to have, let's talk.