Decisions, with receipts
Engagements and builds from the record. The long versions live in the Field Manual; the recent ones are running in production right now.
Twenty-plus surfaces, one identity core, zero employees
The situation: 2026. A financial advocacy platform and its product family needed to exist fast: QR safety tools, e-signatures, independent research, fourteen vertical advocacy sites.
The call: One identity core on the Cloudflare edge, passkey-only, and build it solo instead of hiring first.
The result: 20+ live surfaces shipped from zero in months. Funded; the raise closed in weeks because the product was already running. The receipt is live →
The $46-a-month QR code, rebuilt free in 20 minutes
The situation: A friend was quoted $46 a month for a QR code that would stop working the moment the subscription lapsed.
The call: Build the first version in under 20 minutes, run it entirely in the browser so nothing leaves the device, and give it away.
The result: A few months later: 175+ QR and barcode types, a QR safety checker, a pro tier, and over 7 million hits a month. Hosting cost: zero dollars. Full story →
The vendor claimed 98.7% accuracy. The emergency room got 68%.
The situation: A speech-recognition vendor demoed 98.7% accuracy on scripted audio. Deployed in an emergency room, the real number was 68%.
The call: Benchmark on real radio traffic and real first responders, not clean corpora and actors, and report the stratified numbers even when they look worse.
The result: Published benchmarks lower than every competitor’s marketing page, and real-world performance higher. That testing discipline is how I evaluate every vendor claim in a diligence. Full story →
Dozens of blockchain pitches. One question killed 95% of them.
The situation: 2017 to 2018, technical due diligence on dozens of blockchain startups at the peak of the hype.
The call: Ask each one: can you solve this with a database? Most could. That is not a blockchain company; that is a database company with a token.
The result: The user data agreed. One startup’s own funnel showed a 95% dropout at the wallet-and-KYC step. Same discipline, different hype cycle, applies to AI pitches today. Full story →
Thirty million concurrent connections, on purpose
The situation: ZettaZing needed a push platform that could not fall over at scale, and every off-the-shelf stack had a ceiling below where the business needed to go.
The call: Build ECHO from scratch and own every layer that could break: data format, transport, servers.
The result: In 2014, 3,000+ AWS instances simulated 30 million sustained concurrent connections without a hitch. Designed for billions. Full story →
A bad radio, an unfamiliar accent, a vessel in distress
The situation: A Coast Guard crew needed to locate a vessel in distress from VHF audio with helicopter noise behind it. Demo conditions do not exist out there.
The call: Engineer for the adversarial environment itself instead of tuning a general-purpose model, and carry the system through federal authorization.
The result: I was in the operations room when the crew used our voice AI to find that vessel. That scar tissue is now AMBIE. Full story →
The $40M acquisition that closed at $28M
The situation: I watched an acquisition nearly collapse in diligence over IP that had never been protected.
The call: The buyer renegotiated. The company had no leverage left, because the gap was real and discovered late.
The result: A 30% haircut: $40M became $28M. IP and technical diligence before the LOI is cheaper than during. This is the discount my diligence work exists to prevent, on either side of the table. Full story →
That is the visible fraction. Many of the projects I have worked on cannot appear here at all: the NDAs are strict enough that I cannot name the client, the industry, or sometimes even the year. If your problem needs that level of discretion, you are in the right place.
Operating roles
Abundera (founder & CTO, 2026 to present)
Federated platform of 20+ production surfaces under one identity hub. QR safety family, e-signature ceremony with content-bound integrity, financial-advocacy core, fourteen vertical advocacy sites. Cloudflare edge, passkey-only, Plaid-connected. Built solo, shipped from zero in months. Funded; the raise closed in weeks on running product.
AMBIE (founder, 2025 to present)
Acoustic intelligence ASR. Patent-pending recognition that adapts to environment in real time. Currently in development.
Voice AI startup (co-founder & CTO, 2018 to 2024)
Voice AI for federal agencies. Coast Guard and DHS deployments. Real-time radio comms ASR in adversarial acoustic conditions.
Barbarians Inc (founder & CEO, 2021 to present)
Software studio for startups. Architecture, technical due diligence, voice AI, hard-systems rescue.
Trivlet (founder, 2026 to present)
High-speed competitive trivia. 10,000+ packs, real-time multiplayer, a ranking system that rewards knowledge and speed.
ZettaZing (CTO, 2014 to 2017)
Built ECHO push-notification platform: 3,000 AWS instances, 30M concurrent connections. Designed for billions.
Einstrong / SmartChannels (CTO, 1998 to 2014)
Long-running CMS and prediction-market platform. Acquired SmartChannels into Einstrong in 2004.
Core Logic Software (CEO & CTO, 1996 to 2004)
Consulting and dot-com-era products. RUM (challenge-response spam solution). CoreBA. Mortar Maker.
MSNBC (SDE, 1995 to 1998)
Built Workbench, the in-house CMS that ran MSNBC during the early consumer-internet era. Left before the dot-com crash, which is a story.
What I get hired for
Production systems that have outgrown the people who built them. Voice AI that works in the demo but breaks in the field. Architecture decisions that need a second pair of eyes before the CFO signs. Acquisition diligence that goes past the slide deck. Hot-sauce business decisions occasionally (separate venture).
What I won’t take
Junior-rate code work. "Digital transformation" engagements that are really change management. Vendor-paid due diligence. Briefs written to validate a decision already made. Anything where the answer is going to be a Powerpoint deck and not a working system. No retainers, no equity: fixed scope, fixed fee.