◗ AI for the graft · humans for the pure magic
Ye mak the music. I cut the groove.
The tech. The launch. The ops. The buiks. The vision bides yours. Nou gang an mak the thing.
A tech, GTM, an operations partner for brands that mak real things. Startup tae scale, amplified bi AI. I took Google Support intae the LLM era at five billion users, wi a team. Syne I did it on ma ain at Gatefold, aw fower seats. Ae build at a time, first real thing shipped in as little as a quarter.
Ae build at a time. If the fit's wrang, ye'll ken bi week twa.
The model
An accelerator is a semple idea. A short fixed windae, a gey wee nummer o companies, an somebody aw the wey in it wi ye. Syne it ends, an ye're somewhaur ye wadnae hae won tae on yer ain in the time.
The version ye ken adds a cohort, a demo day, an a programme. This ane strips the theatre. Whit I invest is leverage — the tech, the launch, the ops, an the buiks, run bi the ae person movin like a hale flair o them.
Nae associates, nae account managers, nae committee. The reason isnae romance aboot warkin on ma ain. It's that ilka ane o thae exists tae sell ye mair o itsel, an no ane o them ships a thing.
Ye bide the ane that decides. Ma job is tae be the best support system ye've got, no tae ken better than ye dae aboot yer ain thing. The taste is yours. The speed is mine.
An accelerator wi nae stake in whether ye accelerate is juist a vendor wi better brandin.
The consultin model is biggit tae bill, no tae ship. Sae it got turnt upside doon.
The pairt ye'll feel first
Speir a question at an agency an the answer taks a week. No acause the thinkin taks a week. Acause the thinkin has tae be socialised. Somebody bigs a case, somebody buiks a call, somebody speirs whit the partner thinks.
Nane o that exists here. Naebody tae convince, nae case tae big, naething written for an internal audience that'll never read it. Ye speir, an the answer comes back the same day wi the reasonin attached.
The same gaes for whether we should be warkin thegither at aw. Ye'll ken bi week twa, no month sax, an I'd raither tine the quarter than spend it bein a bad fit politely.
Speed isnae the absence o rigour. It's the absence o an approval queue.
Why the seam
A groove is an analog encodin o a wave. A feelin, cut intae a physical thing, sae a stranger can feel it again decades later. That's the hale trick, an it's why I dinnae think digital is the point. Digital anely earns its keep when it maks something ye can feel.
◗ Side A · analog
◗ Side B · digital
◗ Whit I big when I'm the client
Ilka app I've shipped for masel is a digital product aboot an analog pleasure.
gatefold.fm — a shelf, a daily pick, an a clerk wi opinions. Vinyl, CDs, tapes.
Poker Clock — a blind timer for folk sittin in a room thegither.
Chiefs Trivia — fandom, whit maun be the least digital thing there is.
Nane o that wis the plan. It's juist whit I rax for, an ilka ane shipped in weeks raither than quarters. If yer business maks something real, ye probably want an operator that thinks the real pairt is the point.
◗ Dogfood · portfolio company no. 1
The record-collector app. Idea tae App Store approval in thirty days on nae budget, launched on Reddit, an it hasnae stapped shippin syne — an AI record-shop clerk, CarPlay, a kiosk mode aside the turntable, an a Shopify channel for record shops nou in review. AI in the build an AI in the product. Ma company, ma siller, ilka seat filled bi me. Afore I ran this on yer business, I ran it on mine. Hae a swatch at it live. It's the pitch, workin.
Ae portfolio company sae faur, an the seat is open. That's the model, no a gap in it.
“Ye can feel the pure joy he’s pourin intil this wi ilka new update.” — APP STORE REVIEW · ★★★★★
// a consultant wad draw ye a 2×2 richt here. thanks Accenture, they battered it intae me.
Maist operators hae done ane o thae fower. The rare pairt isnae the breadth, it's the crossin: folk that ship 0→1 mostly haenae run scale, an folk that hae run scale mostly cannae stert frae naething. Near naebody's done baith on the product side and in the buiks.
Idea tae the App Store in 30 days, on ma ain. Ae codebase across iOS, Android, an web, plus a Shopify channel in review.
Catalogue, pricin, a workin register, an COGS on a crate o records. A close whaur there wisnae ane.
Pit Google Support intae the LLM era at speed — ma team cairried it frae insicht tae shipped product, on a surface servin 5B+ users. 6× chatbot accuracy. Syne Claude an MCP across 17 engineerin teams.
The recommendation engine and the Fulfilled-by-Amazon integration, the company's #1 OKR. $1.5B in revenue growth across EMEA.
◗ Whit actually chynges
The ceilin is rarely demand. It's that ilka decision routes through ye. Whit tae reorder, whether tae discount, whit tae tell the customer speirin whaur their parcel is. Ilka ane taks a meenit an there's three hunner a week, sae revenue scales wi yer oors an growth stops feelin like winnin.
The normal fix is hirin, an for a business yer size it's a trap. Ye need the revenue afore ye can afford the hire an the capacity afore ye can get the revenue. Syne the hire needs managin, an ye cannae dae that, acause ye're the bottleneck.
Process biggit roond AI pits the capacity in afore the payroll. The pairts o the week that shouldnae need a human stop needin ane, the throughput gaes up, an the new siller peys for whitever's neist.
An it's the same wark that maks the business worth something wioot ye staundin in it. Owner-dependence is the first thing ony buyer marks doon.
◗ Whaur the siller actually is
I ran Google's digital marketin centre o excellence an creative think tank, aligned wi YouTube, for the tap fifty brands in EMEA. Sae tak this frae somebody that wis peyed tae argue the opposite.
The gap atween excellent digital marketin an merely adequate is sma. The gap atween a business that kens its margin an ane that disnae is muckle.
Awbody sells ye the first ane. Near naebody will touch the third, an that's whaur maist brands yer size are quietly bleedin — profitable on paper, nae siller in the bank, an growin maks it waur. AI transformation isnae a stage in this diagram. It unnerpins aw fower.
Whit that buys ye · five fronts
The hale route tae the customer. Positionin, funnel, lifecycle email, launch, an the number it aw has tae move.
→ the funnel mappit end tae end · flows live in yer Mailchimp or Klaviyo · a dashboard that tells ye if it actually workit
Frae a napkin idea tae a shipped product, syne the version that survives scale. Chatbots that deflect real tickets, recommendation engines that earn their keep, an the aye/na call when the honest answer is na.
→ a workin v1 in real users' haunds · evals in CI, no a demo that dees on Monday · the reasonin scrievit doon
The dreich hauf naebody else will touch, an the hauf that decides whether scale kills ye. Ken whit ye awn, whit it cost, an whit it brocht in. Ye cannae scale a business ye cannae coont.
→ a 13-week siller forecast aff yer PO calendar · contribution margin bi SKU · a close that lands bi the 10th
Identity that leans aw the wey in, sae ye dinnae look like ilka ither AI startup, an true cultural adaptation sae it lands in the neist market an aw. Led bi a fluent French speaker. BA in French, GTM for EMEA's tap 50 brands.
→ the identity system, in files ye awn · ilka string adaptit, no juist owerset · ae market live, syne the neist
No a chatbot, no a workshop. AI wioot process is a demo. Process wioot AI is admin. The jynin is the hale job, an it's the ane I've done twice at scale. The creative caws bide human. Sae dis the taste.
→ use cases rankit bi the siller they mak, no bi the hype · the process rinnin in yer stack, no a pilot · runbooks, acause a process is judgement ye get tae keep
The seat · ae build, 1:1
Somebody that understaunds the vision first, syne helps ye shape it an ship it. Ae build at a time, aw the wey in, as deep as it taks: ecommerce, recommendation engines, tax nexus, transfer pricing, the lot.
Twal weeks tae something real. Syne as faur as it gaes.
The twa naebody else combines
Somebody that can ship the product and close the buiks. Maist folk that can dae the first hae never done the second, an them that can dae the second hae never shipped a thing.
Hoo it rins
Nae staundin meetins aboot meetins. The first real thing ships in as little as a quarter, an syne ye get the keys. Some o it taks langer than twal weeks, an scale aye dis, sae it rins a quarter at a time an ye re-up when the last ane earned it. I'd raither launch ye an leave than be a line item that never ends.
Twa weeks o bletherin. I learn the business, the taste, an the real goal. Syne we name the ae thing worth biggin, an the number it has tae move.
We scope it for real. Funnel, stack, edge cases, the tax-nexus-and-recommendation-engine stuff nobody warned ye about. A plan ye could hand to anyone. Ye won't have to.
I build it with ye, in the open. AI for leverage, TPM rigor for the finish. Ye end the quarter with a shipped product, not a deck.
◗ The deal
Frae €50k a quarter.
The same trade the famous accelerators run, wi the ae difference. They invest and run. I invest and operate. Leverage maistly, capital whaur it fits. Never hourly, acause hourly peys me tae be slow, an the lave we wark oot on the call.
Receipts, no patter
Nane o it wis a solo act o genius. It wis orchestration, an that's the actual job. Connect the folk, the teams, an the pieces intae ae thing that ships. Imagine what dots I can connect for ye.
◗ Aboot me · whaur aw fower corners come frae
Twinty year o bein the person that gets it shipped. Physical goods at Zappos, creative GTM in Paris, global ML at Google, AI across seventeen teams at Affirm, an syne a company o ma ain tae pruive it still warks when naebody's haudin the budget.
I helped launch Google's Star Trek computer. Now ye can have yer own.
The Verge “…the most successful by far.” On Project Kennedy, Google’s first cross-product redesign, which I led as TPM. · read ↗The wark, in the press
◗ Atelier Le Nous Royal · la galerie
Proof we ship: and that we're pure dead funny. Biggit for the love o it, syne made tae actually wark. Range, humour, an a feenished product. Pick three.
Fan-trivia gemme for Chiefs Kingdom. Brand obsession, gamified.
A tournament blind-timer that actually looks pure brilliant. Structure for chaos.
An app for vinyl/CD/tape nerds. One shelf, a daily pick, a gallus AI clerk. Built & shipped solo. iOS · Android · Web.
Turn a crate of records into a priced, scannable catalog and a proper register, folding table to full storefront. Live demo on the page.
A Shopify app for record shops. Scan the barcode, ID the exact pressin, an the collector-grade listin writes itsel. In APP STORE REVIEW.
◗ Wha I partner wi
Founders an creatives that hae awready made the thing an want it tae gang further. Indie labels, makers, D2C, creative commerce wi taste an a story (Gatefold is ane o mine). If ye big something an want mair, better, faster, soul fully intact, we should hae a blether.
◗ Book a wee fit call · ae build at a time
The seat's open, or it isnae. Ae call tells us baith. The person ye meet is the person that ships. Bring a concept, a guddle, or a mibbe.