Open to forward-deployed, solutions & product rolesRemote or relocation
I learned how to lead, prioritize, and solve customer problems by working every position in a restaurant, then managing teams of 20+. Since 2024, I’ve shipped twelve-plus products in under two years: iOS apps, an AI voice SaaS, and a Shopify app. I work best where customer problems, AI products, and hands-on implementation meet.
Selected work
The case studies show what I chose, what changed, and what happened next.
Turned an 11-source news pipeline into briefings that explain what a story means for one reader.
7 months · iOS · AI pipeline
Built a floor-ready shift brief for restaurant managers, then paused it to ship other products.
Paused · iOS and Android · 8 days
Built with a working electrician, then simplified around gloves, glare, and the calculations he repeats on the job.
Built with an electrician · iOS
Used cancellations and onboarding behavior to reshape a two-day build instead of defending the first version.
#92 → #19 for “fiber counter”
Turned affirmations into a two-part loop: write a belief you can accept today, then save real moments that support it.
App Store · iOS · on-device
02 · 2010–2020
Restaurant work taught me to notice the customer, the team, and the problem that will matter five minutes from now.
I worked every position in a restaurant before holding nearly every management role: floor, bar, scheduling, kitchen, and assistant general manager. The work included hiring, training, schedules, inventory, budgets, vendor orders, performance reviews, and customer complaints.
Demand exceeded capacity
An incorrect forecast left a weekday shift short-staffed when the restaurant suddenly filled. I started a wait with tables still open, let the kitchen and servers recover, then reopened the patio one or two tables per server.
Result: the team stabilized, servers made good money, and guests who stayed thanked us.
The metric could not be trusted
I found products recorded in the wrong quantities. A ten-pound case might be counted as seven. I corrected the inputs, tracked waste, ordered against sales, and worked to retain the experienced staff who kept waste down.
Result: first or second in food cost across six locations.
The best shifts were never one person carrying the room. They were a group noticing what the others needed. I know how to lead that kind of team, and I know how to be part of it.
COVID ended that career in the spring of 2020, and I’ll be honest: I was ready for a change. The part I still miss is the crew.
03 · 2021–2024
Two businesses taught me to separate effort from evidence.
What came next wasn’t software. I ran a t-shirt brand for a few years. It made sales when I fed it ad money and 80- or 90-hour weeks. The underlying math never improved, so I ended it.
I also spent a stretch of those years developing a protein bar with my brother. Hundreds of store-bought bars taste-tested, dozens of recipes. It never launched. I liked the customer and product work far more than the idea of running the operation.
I learned to ask a plain question: if I were seeing this work for the first time today, would the evidence justify another month? Sometimes the honest answer is no.
04 · 2024–
AI helps me build software. Product judgment is still the work.
Most ideas start with something I notice: a complaint, an awkward workflow, or an existing product that feels one feature short. I search the App Store for alternatives, then ask Claude or ChatGPT to challenge the idea. I want the reasons it could fail, not automatic encouragement.
Start with a complaint, awkward workflow, or missing feature.
Research alternatives and ask AI to make the case against the idea.
Define the user, the central feature, the screens, and the business model.
Run it on real devices, inspect failures, revise, and decide whether to ship.
When something fails, I start with the evidence: the build error, the Xcode console, the n8n execution log, the Supabase query. The logs usually tell me which layer broke, whether that’s the data, an API call, the model, or the UI. Once I can describe the problem precisely, I bring AI in, test the fix, and keep going until the real behavior changes.
AI writes a lot of my code. I design how the pieces fit together: Ripple’s 11-source news pipeline, the streaming that cut its wait time from roughly 13–14 seconds to about 2–3 seconds, and Yapper’s call flow through telephony, AI, webhooks, billing, and the customer dashboard. I own the product decisions, implementation, quality bar, testing, release, marketing, and the outcome when an idea does not work.
Twelve-plus products shipped in under two years. What that number doesn’t show is the folder on my Mac holding fifty-some projects, most of them dead at 80 percent built. They died because I did the customer math and it didn’t work out, and finishing is the expensive part.
The shipped products are easy to count. The more useful work was often deciding what not to finish.
05 · Convictions
Four questions that show up across the work.
They are not a framework so much as a way to stay honest about what the product needs.
takt has no accounts, streaks, or gamification. Grove tracks one nutrient instead of forty. More features would make both products less useful.
Ripple does not ask users to care which model is behind it. It asks about their life, then uses that context to explain why a story matters to them.
TelemetryDeck showed people leaving Grove’s onboarding, so I rebuilt it. The first version is a hypothesis, even when I like it.
Echoes started as a test bed and earned a ship. Wandering Bacon proved its concept and was wound down. Continuing is a decision, not the default.
06 · More work
The rest of the index, with the decisions and numbers inside each case study.
a pomodoro timer that refuses to do too much. The first app I shipped, and where I learned how much taste matters.
The first one
iOS · Design
tip splitting for restaurant crews, from my old life. $4.99 once, no subscription, because it costs me nothing to run.
2 days to ship
iOS · One-time pricing
a shift companion for restaurant managers. Paused while I shipped other products.
Paused
iOS · Android · Prototype
send a friend songs like it’s 1995. The 24-hour wait was on purpose. So was retiring it.
Retired on purpose
iOS · Product Hunt
an AI phone receptionist for trades and service businesses that cannot always answer the phone.
1,000+ leads tested
SaaS · Voice AI
rental management inside Shopify, scoped from my brother’s rental workflow before I built anything.
Live on Shopify
Shopify · B2B
voice notes that come back to you. The test bed became the product.
Live on the App Store
iOS · On-device AI
07 · The Ask
A year of building, a year of distribution, and the ask: a team.
This past year I mostly stopped starting new things. I picked three products and worked on distribution: ASO, search ads, cold emails, and even postcards to plumbers. Shipping was only the beginning.
I can build a product alone. I do not want to build my career alone.
I’m looking for the seat between the customer, the product, and the people building it. The title changes by company: forward-deployed, solutions, implementation, product. The work is the same. I want to understand what is actually going wrong, help define the answer, and work with a team to make it real.
My route into technology was not traditional. It gave me more than a decade of customer-facing judgment and operating responsibility before I opened Xcode. I have led teams, filled whatever role the shift needed, and learned when to make the call and when someone else has the better idea.
I do my best work around other people. I can build alone, but ideas get better when they are challenged by someone equally invested in the outcome. Collaboration is the part of work I miss most.
Remote works. So does relocating for the right team.