The connecting pattern
From systems integration to founder-built products
I co-founded Lloyd-Allan Corp. in 1991 and helped develop it from a systems integrator into a manufacturer of computer peripherals for remote interfaces and out-of-band power control. The company completed a successful exit in 1999.
My later work expanded across software, entertainment, media, live production, and network-driven products. It included hosting the television program Comfort Zone Extreme, founding Padded Cell Entertainment, developing supporting products associated with Electronic Arts releases including NASCAR 09 and NCAA Football 10, and creating Rhythmhoüz, a professional networking platform for the music industry.
I also designed and operated a live-performance broadcast and recording studio, developed Cool Cat Games for bars, restaurants, clubs, and events, created RecoverNode for guarded Linux service recovery, and founded Bartenderz International to give independent hospitality businesses access to stronger training and accountability systems.
Rhythmhoüz • Designed and hand-engineered in 2020
A professional network built around the complete music-industry ecosystem
Rhythmhoüz began with a practical observation: the music industry depends on far more than performers, yet general-purpose social networks did not organize the relationships among the people and organizations required to create, record, manufacture, promote, book, distribute, teach, support, and present music.
I designed and hand-engineered a full-stack platform for individual professionals, artists and bands, venues, recording and broadcast studios, labels, promoters, manufacturers, music schools, merchants, charities, and other industry participants. The system included role-specific profiles, artist and band pages, electronic press kits, media management, connections, opportunities, messaging, search and discovery, analytics, administration, subscriptions, and controlled profile visibility.
The platform combined authenticated member experiences with dynamically rendered public-facing pages. Its data model and user experience had to represent many different professional roles while preserving a coherent network, discoverability, privacy, and useful relationships among them.
I built Rhythmhoüz in 2020, before modern AI coding agents became available to accelerate development. It remains an important demonstration of my underlying software-engineering ability, platform architecture, product judgment, community-system design, and understanding of network effects.
Cool Cat Games
Cool Cat Games began as a digital jukebox intended to compete with established venue-entertainment platforms. After determining that commercial music licensing would make the original model prohibitively expensive, I pivoted toward interactive venue games with a more practical path to market.
The games are not conventional bar-game copies. They draw on my experience with supporting products connected to AAA game releases and are designed around the shared energy of a live room. Guests participate from their phones, venue televisions become part of the experience, and staff control the event.
Visit coolcatjuke.com
Bartenderz International
Bartenderz International converts a guided business questionnaire into customized bartender training, policy, checklist, evaluation, and management documents.
The goal is to give independent hospitality businesses the same kind of structured training and accountability tools that larger organizations often have, without requiring owners and managers to build everything from scratch.
Visit bartenderz-intl.com
RecoverNode
RecoverNode is an independent Linux resilience system for monitoring self-hosted services and making guarded recovery decisions. It is designed to restore services without creating dangerous restart or reboot loops.
The product reflects the same operating principle found throughout my work: automate what should be automated, but retain clear safeguards, evidence, and accountability around consequential decisions.
Visit recovernode.com
Modern development
Agentic AI as an engineering multiplier
I am highly experienced in using AI coding agents and agentic development workflows to accelerate research, architecture, implementation, debugging, testing, documentation, and iteration.
AI is not a substitute for technical judgment. I use it to increase the amount and speed of useful work while retaining human control over product direction, architecture, security, maintainability, validation, and commercial decisions.
That combination matters: modern tools provide leverage, while decades of product and operating experience determine whether the output becomes a dependable production system.
How I work with founders
A founder’s operating counterpart
Some founders do not need another advisor. They need a senior counterpart who can understand the vision, challenge assumptions, translate direction into daily operating decisions, and take ownership of execution.
I work comfortably at that boundary—close enough to the product and technology to make decisions, senior enough to establish teams and standards, and hands-on enough to remove the blockers that prevent plans from becoming working systems.
The strongest version of that relationship resembles a near-peer partnership: complementary strengths, candid communication, and enough mutual respect that either person could comfortably report to the other if the roles were reversed.
Music, sound and live production
I have been a professional musician for decades and have designed sound-control, acoustic, recording, and broadcast environments. That work strengthened my understanding of signal flow, integration, physical constraints, and the details that determine how a designed experience feels in actual use.
“Sonically perfect.”
— Gregg Fox, founder of Renaissance Rock Orchestra, describing the live-performance broadcast and recording studio I designed and built
Design and photography
My professional photography background affects how I approach interfaces and communication. Composition, hierarchy, contrast, framing, and clarity are not decorative afterthoughts; they shape whether people understand and trust a product.
High-stakes instruction
More than 1,000 skydives, work as a certified skydiving coach, and more than 25 years as a scuba instructor taught me to break complex skills into repeatable steps, identify failure modes early, communicate calmly, and build safety margins into execution.
In software and leadership, that translates into explicit standards, better onboarding, disciplined testing, useful checklists, and fewer avoidable production surprises.
Product and network thinking
I am drawn to products that become more valuable through participation. I think beyond implementation toward adoption, retention, feedback loops, operating behavior, and the reasons people return.
Leadership under uncertainty
I have built standards from zero, led through changing conditions, recovered projects that lost momentum, and made practical decisions when information was incomplete. I value clear ownership, direct communication, and forward movement without unnecessary drama.
What you can expect
- Direct, understandable communication
- Product thinking alongside engineering judgment
- Fast iteration without careless shortcuts
- Hands-on ownership when execution is required
- Documentation and systems that remain useful after delivery
