◗ AI for leverage · humans for the magic
You make the music. I cut the groove.
I run the tech, the launch, the ops, and the books. The vision stays yours.
An operator for brands that make real things, from startup to scale. My team took Google Support into the LLM era for five billion users. Then I built Gatefold solo, from first commit to the App Store. The first real thing ships in as little as a quarter.
One build at a time. A bad fit shows by week two.
The model
An accelerator is a simple idea. A short window, a handful of companies, and someone all the way in it with you. When it ends, you're further along than you'd be alone.
The version you know adds a cohort, a demo day, and a program. This one strips the theatre. What I invest is leverage. I run the tech, the launch, the ops, and the books. One person, moving like a whole floor.
No associates, account managers, or committee. Each one exists to sell you more of itself. None of them ships.
You still decide. My job is to be the best support system you've got. You know your own thing better than I do. The taste is yours. The speed is mine.
An accelerator with no stake in whether you accelerate is a vendor with better branding.
Consulting is built to bill. So I flipped it.
The part you'll feel first
Ask an agency a question and the answer takes a week. The thinking takes an hour. Socializing it takes the rest. Somebody builds a case, and somebody else asks what the partner thinks.
None of that exists here. There's nobody to convince and no memo for an audience that won't read it. You ask. The answer comes back the same day, reasoning attached.
Same goes for whether we should work together at all. You'll know by week two, not month six. I'd rather lose the quarter than spend it politely being a bad fit.
Speed isn't the absence of rigour. It's the absence of an approval queue.
Why the seam
A groove is an analog encoding of a wave. Someone cuts a feeling into vinyl, and a stranger feels it again decades later. That's the whole trick. It's also why I don't think digital is the point. Digital only earns its keep when it makes something you can feel.
◗ Side A · analog
◗ Side B · digital
◗ What I build when I'm the client
Every app I've shipped for myself is a digital product about an analog pleasure.
gatefold.fm is a shelf, a daily pick, and a clerk with opinions. Vinyl, CDs, and tapes.
Poker Clock is a blind timer for people in the same room.
Chiefs Trivia is fandom, the least digital thing there is.
None of it was planned. It's what I reach for. Each one shipped in weeks. If your business makes something real, you want an operator who thinks the real part is the point.
◗ Dogfood · portfolio company no. 1
The record-collector app. Idea to App Store approval in thirty days on zero budget, then a launch on Reddit. It hasn't stopped shipping since. There's an AI record-store clerk, CarPlay, a kiosk mode for beside the turntable, and a Shopify channel for record stores in review. AI in the build and AI in the product. My company and my money, with me in every seat. I ran this on my business before I'd run it on yours. Browse it live. It's the pitch, working.
One portfolio company so far, by design. The seat is open.
“You can feel the continued joy he’s channelling into this with each new update.” — APP STORE REVIEW · ★★★★★
// a consultant would draw you a 2×2 right here. thanks Accenture, they beat it into me.
Most operators have done one of these four. The rare part is the crossing. The 0→1 crowd rarely runs scale. Scale veterans rarely start from zero. Almost nobody has done both on the product side and in the books.
Idea to the App Store in 30 days, solo. One codebase for iOS, Android, and web. A Shopify channel in review.
Catalogue, pricing, a working register, and COGS on a crate of records. A month end where there wasn't one.
My team took Google Support into the LLM era for 5B+ users. 6× chatbot accuracy. Before that, the Knowledge Panel and the Assistant launch.
The recommendation engine and the Fulfilled-by-Amazon integration, the company's #1 OKR. $1.5B in revenue growth across EMEA.
◗ What changes
The ceiling is you. Every decision routes through you. Whether to reorder, and what to tell the customer whose package is late. Each takes a minute. There are three hundred a week. So revenue scales with your hours, and growth stops feeling like winning.
The usual fix is hiring. At your size it's a trap. You need revenue to afford the hire and the hire to make the revenue. Then the hire needs managing, and you're the bottleneck.
Process built around AI puts the capacity in before the payroll. The parts of the week that shouldn't need a human stop needing one. Throughput goes up. The new money pays for what's next.
The same work makes the business worth something without you in it. Owner-dependence is the first thing a buyer marks down.
◗ Where the money is
I ran Google's digital marketing think tank for the top fifty brands in EMEA. Take this from someone paid to argue the opposite.
The gap between excellent digital marketing and merely adequate is small. The gap between a business that knows its margin and one that doesn't is enormous.
Everyone sells you the first one. Almost nobody touches the third, and that's where most brands your size bleed. Profitable on paper. No cash in the bank. Growth makes it worse. AI is the floor under all four.
What that buys you · five fronts
The whole route to the customer. Positioning, funnel, lifecycle email, launch, and the number it all has to move.
→ the funnel mapped end to end · flows live in your Mailchimp or Klaviyo · a dashboard that says whether it worked
From napkin to shipped product, then the version that survives scale. Chatbots that close real tickets. Recommendation engines that earn their keep. The no-go call when the honest answer is no.
→ a working v1 in real users' hands · evals in CI, not a demo that dies on Monday · the reasoning written down
The unglamorous half nobody else will touch. It decides whether scale kills you. Know what you own, what it cost, and what it earned. You can't scale a business you can't count.
→ a 13-week cash forecast off your PO calendar · contribution margin by SKU · a month end that lands by the 10th
An identity with nerve, so you don't look like every other AI startup. Real cultural adaptation, so it lands in Quebec too. Led by a fluent French speaker with a BA in French and GTM for EMEA's top 50 brands.
→ the identity system, in files you own · every string rewritten for its market · English and French live, then the next
Not a chatbot, not a workshop. AI without process is a demo. Process without AI is admin. Joining them is the whole job. I've done it twice at scale. The creative calls stay human. So does the taste.
→ use cases ranked by payback · the process running in your stack · runbooks, because a process is judgment you get to keep
Shopify
The theme is the easy part. The work is in the data underneath. Google reads it. So does your search box. So does a shopper in Tokyo, in her own language.
Your brand should sound like itself in Montréal, Berlin, and Osaka. Product names stay put. Everything around them gets rewritten by rule, market by market.
→ a translation rulebook per market · every locale routed and indexed · titles and meta descriptions in each language
Formats that give people a reason to come back. A surprise box. A limited drop. An advent calendar people set an alarm for.
→ the format designed and priced · built into the store · a drop calendar you can run without me
A search box that knows your catalogue, and a product page where the decision happens. The details where the eye lands. A buy button the thumb can reach.
→ filters and synonyms built from how customers ask · a sticky add-to-cart on mobile · related products picked by rule
A redesign built from where shoppers stall. Cart, drawer, checkout, and every screen width in between.
→ an audit ranked by impact · the fixes shipped · a rollback copy before every push
The price on the page should be the price at checkout, in every country. Tax, duties, and shipping rules that agree on every screen.
→ tax shown right per country · shipping zones that make sense · duties settled before checkout
Markup that tells Google what's on the shelf, variant by variant. Price, stock, image, and delivery time.
→ one offer per variant · returns and shipping declared once · dead schema removed
Filters are only as good as the data under them. Colour, material, size, and customs codes, cleaned once and kept clean.
→ attributes filters can trust · an undo record for every bulk fix · a checklist for every new product
The dull jobs, on a schedule. Inventory syncs, order tags, and checks that catch known bugs before they ship.
→ scheduled jobs with logs · pre-push checks · data entry without touching code
AI transformation
The label sounds like a consulting deck. The work is plainer. AI becomes one more step in the jobs your team already runs, and your team learns to drive it.
Receiving. Check the packing slip against the PO and flag what's short or damaged.
Shipping. Draft the customs forms and the landed-cost math before the box is taped.
Catalogue intake. Turn a supplier sheet into product copy in your brand's voice.
→ the SOP rewritten with the AI step in it · the prompt, the check, and who signs off
Your team learns to use it, so nobody waits on a vendor. Real tasks, your own data, your own tools, until it's routine.
→ working sessions on real jobs · a playbook per role · someone on the team who owns it after I leave
The seat · one build, 1:1
I get the vision first. Then I help you shape it and ship it. One build at a time, as deep as it takes. Ecommerce, recommendation engines, GST/HST registration, transfer pricing, the lot.
Twelve weeks to something real. Then as far as it goes.
The two nobody else combines
Someone who can ship the product and close the books. Most builders have never closed a month. Finance people have never shipped anything.
How it runs
No standing meetings about meetings. The first real thing ships in as little as a quarter. Then you get the keys. Some work takes longer than twelve weeks, and scale always does. So it runs a quarter at a time, and you re-up only if the last one earned it. I'd rather launch you and leave than be a line item that never ends.
Two weeks of riffing. I learn the business, the taste, and the real goal. Then we name the one thing worth building and the number it has to move.
We scope it for real. Funnel, stack, edge cases, and the CRA-and-recommendation-engine stuff nobody warned you about. A plan you could hand to anyone. You won't have to.
I build it with you, in the open. AI for leverage. TPM rigour for the finish. You end the quarter holding a shipped product.
◗ The deal
From €50k a quarter.
The same trade the famous accelerators run, with one difference. They invest and run. I invest and operate. Mostly leverage. Capital where it fits. Never hourly, because hourly pays me to be slow. Cash, equity, revenue share, or a blend. We'll find the mix on the call.
Receipts
None of it was solo genius. It was orchestration, and that's the job. Get a lot of people to ship one thing. Your dots are next.
◗ About me · where all four corners come from
Twenty years as the person who gets it shipped. Physical goods at Zappos. Creative GTM in Paris. Global ML at Google. Then a company of my own, to prove it works when nobody else holds the budget.
I helped launch Google's Star Trek computer. Now you can have your own.
The Verge “…the most successful by far.” On Project Kennedy, the Google redesign I led as TPM. · read ↗The work, in the press
◗ Atelier Le Nous Royal · la galerie
Proof we ship: et que nous sommes drôles. Built for the love of it, then made to work. Range, humour, and a finished product. Pick three.
Fan-trivia game for Chiefs Kingdom. Brand obsession, gamified.
A tournament blind timer with taste. Structure for chaos.
An app for vinyl/CD/tape nerds. One shelf, a daily pick, a snarky AI clerk. Built & shipped solo. iOS · Android · Web.
Turn a crate of records into a priced, scannable catalogue and a real register. Folding table to full storefront. Live demo on the page.
A Shopify app for record stores. Scan the barcode, ID the exact pressing, and the collector-grade listing writes itself. In App Store review.
◗ Who I partner with
Founders and creatives who've already made the thing and want it to go further. Indie labels, makers, D2C, and creative commerce with taste and a story. Gatefold is one of mine. If you want more of it, faster, with the soul intact, let's talk.
◗ Book a fit call · one build at a time
The seat's open or it isn't. One call tells us both. You'll be talking to the person who ships. Bring a concept, a mess, or a maybe.