John Q

Entrepreneur

Executive Technologist

My forte and my passion is growing small companies into mid-size businesses. I serve in both product and technical executive roles, as needed. On the product side this means refining the product idea down to its essence to get it out sooner, setting up metric-based decision making up and down the chain, and managing the product teams. On the technical side, I dive in to make the right architectural choices up front, bring in best practices in tools and coding, and then hire great people to build strong teams. Technical hiring is the #1 hurdle for most companies and it is one of my core strengths.

On an individual level I like to get my hands dirty using everything from client side javascript frameworks to node/mongo/redis and mysql/php/apache on the server side with most things in between. Functionally, I've built full consumer-facing sites, API servers, telecom application infrastructure, and mobile applications. I've used a fair number of javascript client frameworks for web (although I still consider CSS a black black art)... for mobile MVP's I like a combo of html5/js + phonegap + native iOS/Android plugins in Objective C / Java - it's quick to set up and lets the product side iterate using web technologies (something they usually already have resources for). For raw speed, I've architected and built telecom grade full-stack multithreaded C++ apps on top of mysql/memcache/boost.

Specialties: 
Scaling small companies to medium size businesses.
Deep technical understanding coupled with product execution and strategic vision
Technical hiring