Forward-deployed CTO · Co-founder of Faana · Austin
I make a company’s business and its technology work as one system, and I do it with its people.
Most of the companies I meet have a plan that’s stuck somewhere between the boardroom and the code. I’ve spent twenty-five years in that gap, as a founder, as a head of engineering, and now as the forward-deployed CTO a CEO brings in to get the plan moving.
Right now I’m building for three kinds of people: founders and leadership teams growing a company through its culture, people stuck in credit card debt, and the cities and companies that need new water.
Founded and sold two companies · Ran engineering at two more that were acquired · SKU accelerator alum, 2015
Where I’ve led engineering and built companies
How we work together
Forward-deployed is a term from Palantir, which sent two people into each customer: a strategist who worked out what the customer needed and an engineer who built it. A founder-led company rarely has both, and the one it has ends up guessing at the other half.
I’ve spent my career doing both. I sit with the CEO until we both know what actually has to change, then I design how it gets built and lead the people building it, and I stay until they’re running it without me.
Forward-deployed CTO
A retainer, scoped with each company
I take a seat at your table and own the technology with you: the roadmap, the architecture, the data, where AI belongs, the vendors and the team. How much time that takes depends on where you are, so we set the scope together. When the work needs more than me, especially on leadership and culture, I bring in the Faana team.
How I lead
I’m the bridge between teams, and the steward of how they work together.
I lead by fostering communication and encouraging people. I help each person see who they are and go the direction they want to go, I’m direct with them because I trust them to handle it, and I put the team in touch with the people it serves. I do it from inside engineering, and after twenty-five years as a founder and an engineering leader I can work with marketing, with outside partners and with the CEO as comfortably as with the engineers, so when teams would otherwise talk past each other, I’m the one in the middle who knows how each of them works.
- the CEO
- engineering
- marketing
- outside partners
- customers
Shared numbers
At Hideaway Report the company’s metrics were hard to follow, so I worked out a shared set of KPIs with the marketing team and put service agreements in place for the teams that depended on engineering.
Data anyone could read
Once Hideaway Report’s data warehouse was live, I trained the staff outside engineering to read the visitor data themselves.
Motivation from inside
At Hideaway Report I moved from carrot-and-stick management to what Daniel Pink calls intrinsic motivation, in engineering and in marketing, and the wall between those two teams got much easier to get through.
Outside teams, one goal
Before a full-time data scientist made sense at Hideaway Report, I brought on contract machine learning developers in several countries, gave them the same data and had their models compete.
One on one first
When I join a stuck engineering team, I talk with people one on one before I say much to the group, because even the strongest engineers can hold back part of the truth with the room watching.
Teams serve teams
Every engineering team delivers value to another team, inside the company or at a customer, and I hold each team to what that other team actually gets from it.
“He understands what motivates highly technical and creative people and how to keep them happy.”
Chriss Jarrell, engineering peer at Mozido, 2016
Where I’ve done it
I’ve done it in software companies, in a consumer brand I formulated and manufactured, in a hospitality business I built on raw land, and now in AI platforms, sometimes as the founder and sometimes running engineering for a CEO.
2025 to now
Faana
Led the architecture of Faana’s platform, and with another engineer on the team we built it to support the partnership Faana offers founder-led companies. When a company’s problem turns out to be technical or about AI, I take that part on.
Built with Autumn Manning and the Faana team
2026 to now
Kreneon
Technical lead on the registry behind contracts designed to pay for new water supply, so each plant’s output arrives as a signed record that a lender, a buyer and a regulator can all trace back to the meter.
Built with Mike Ulwelling and the Kreneon team
2024 to now
Debt Hacker
Invented Debt Hacker for people who owe more on their cards than they can pay down fast, to give them a plan for this month built on their own cards, explained in plain English. In development.
2021 to now
Lost Horizon
Designed two stays on raw Hill Country land so people can have wild Texas and real comfort in the same weekend: a soaking tub under a roof that opens to the sky, coyotes in the valley after dark, and the Lampasas River down the ranch road. We run it as a profitable business, and both stays are Airbnb Guest Favorites.
2020 to 2022
Shep
Led the engineering team that taught a browser extension to read travel sites it was never coded for, keeping corporate travelers informed through COVID. Acquired by Flight Centre Travel Group.
Built with Daniel Senyard, Rey Garcia and the Shep engineers
2017 to 2020
Hideaway Report
Led technology through the turnaround of a luxury travel publisher, with modern data and a changed culture paving the way for a 100X increase in the visitor to paid-subscriber conversion rate. Acquired by TLG.
Built with Crista Bailey and the Hideaway Report team
2009 to 2020
Primo Chalk
Developed the formula and the machinery, then the Primo team and I scaled production and sales through Rogue, EliteFTS and Amazon. Sold the company in 2020.
Built with the Primo team
2002 to 2014
BRC and AgileBid
Led the build of software that took over the hand-tuning of pay-per-click bids, sold BRC in 2010, then co-founded Ideagility, where we grew AgileBid from zero to a million dollars a year in recurring revenue.
Built with my teams at BRC and Ideagility
“Jeremy is someone you want by your side when you’re challenging the status quo, in growth mode, and looking for a problem-solving running partner.”
Crista Bailey, CEO, Hideaway Report, 2020
AI changed what a small team can build.
Software that used to take a team months can now be built in weeks, and a lot of companies are answering that by cutting the engineers who know their systems best. The companies I want to work with do the opposite. They keep those people, ship more with the same team, and put the money they would have spent growing engineering into their leaders, their go-to-market and their culture.
I help CEOs make that work, by deciding where AI belongs and leading their engineers as they build alongside AI agents.
What does it really need to be?
It’s the first question I ask in every company, and I keep asking it. I start by listening, to the CEO, the engineers, sales and a couple of customers, until I can see where the work gets stuck. Then I work the same loop I’ve used for years.
I architect the business and the technology at the same time. I decide where AI belongs and where a deterministic system is safer, and nothing counts as done until it works on real data with real customers.
- Listen and observe
- Challenge and trust
- Support and hold accountable
- Examine and iterate
Faana
Building Faana with Autumn Manning
Faana works alongside founders and CEOs on growth when the company hits a real inflection point, through its culture, its customers and its community. Autumn Manning, who founded Faana and leads it as CEO, joins a company’s leadership team as a fractional executive. I’m her co-founder, leading the platform that supports the work.
Built with Autumn Manning and the Faana team
Tell me what’s stuck.
It’s a thirty-minute call. You tell me what’s stuck, I ask a lot of questions, and you leave with my honest read on where the problem lives, whether or not we end up working together. If I’m not the right person, I’ll tell you who I’d call instead.
