A startup client's product played "match-maker" for consumers in an experience-oriented industry that was moving online during the pandemic. The client found that customers were enthusiastic about the concept but having trouble organizing and executing meetings.

Many of the problems stemmed from the fact that customers were bouncing back and forth from the company's platform to the social media platform where customers often congregated. The client approached me about technical solutions that could reduce friction between their product and the social media platform.

Upon review it was clear that the social media platform was ill-suited to their customers' needs and was treated as a "means to an end" rather than a core aspect of the desired customer experience. I suggested that, with mildly increase effort and cost, they could instead create a replacement for the social media platform within their own product. This new capability would be custom-designed for their customers' needs and provide a dramatically improved user experience versus the social media platform.

Following some iteration, customer feedback, and funding, the company built a highly usable and desirable platform for their customers to congregate, and it was growing rapidly. The client was later acquired by the leading company in their industry.

A Fortune 500 company contracted a product design to solve an industry-wide operational problem, and I was brought in to guide the technical direction and architecture.

The problem solution involved three core pillars, the most important of which was a match engine to identify best-match service suppliers for corporate users of the desired product. The client was considering an advance machine-learning implementation that would likely prove costly and time-consuming.

After researching the problem I identified that there wasn't enough data available for a machine-learning approach. But, I also theorized that with some algorithmic data processing and a touch of data science we should be able to build a simpler but equally viable match engine.

I was able to build a proof-of-concept prototype in short order that was subsequently incorporated into the final product. The product was spun out into its own company, and the spinoff was later acquired by a Fortune 1000 company servicing the operational problem space.

I was approached by a prospective client offering the role of Fractional CTO, seeking technical expertise to augment a team of junior engineers.

Upon discussion and review, I discovered two important details: 1) the team was technically sufficient but lacking release management experience, and 2) the CEO had excellent project management expertise. Although a Fractional CTO role provided an increased revenue opportunity for my consultancy, I decided that would be an unnecessary expenditure of the company's precious resources.

Rather than play a part-time leadership role in a company where engineers were in contact with the CEO on a daily basis - thereby confusing reporting lines - I counter-offered a more limited role as advisor to the CEO. We collaborated on several engineering-related topics such as release management, the psychology of engineers, and software development life-cycle process.

With this assistance, the team settled into a regular and predictable development cadence, shipping v1 of their product and acquiring numerous customers.