Venture Advisory
Helping VCs & PE evaluate, de‑risk, and manage acquisitions.
I’ve built, scaled, and exited the kind of company you’re about to bet on — so I can tell the difference between a defensible asset and a liability in disguise.
Most diligence reads the deck. I read the codebase, the architecture, the compliance posture, and the team that has to carry it forward. Having sat on both sides of the deal table — leading buy-side technical diligence on acquisitions and defending sell-side companies through scrutiny to close — I translate engineering reality into clear investment risk and valuation signal before capital moves, then help portfolio companies protect and grow their value after the check clears.
For venture and private-equity portfolios, that means a single operator who can vet a target, defend a thesis, rebuild the team if needed, and modernize the platform for the next round — turning diligence from a gate into a value-creation lever.
Technical Due Diligence
Buy-side evaluation of target companies — codebase quality, architecture, security posture, technical debt, scalability, and team capability — translated into clear investment risk and valuation signal.
Sell-Side Readiness & Defense
Preparing portfolio companies for acquisition: hardening architecture, closing compliance gaps, and defending the technical narrative under acquirer scrutiny to protect deal value through close.
Investigative Review
Independent investigation into companies, founders, and executives to validate technical claims, surface undisclosed liabilities, and confirm posture matches reality before capital is committed.
Fractional / Operating CTO
Hands-on technical leadership for portfolio companies — setting roadmap, rebuilding teams, and steering architecture from seed through growth-stage scale and acquisition.
AI & Modernization
Architecting generative-AI and multi-agent systems and modernizing legacy platforms to lift margin, velocity, and defensibility across a portfolio.
Post-Acquisition Value Creation
Owning the technical narrative through diligence and close, then driving integration, modernization, and operational rigor to compound value across the hold period.
Venture Creation
Venture Creation, Executive Leadership & Exits.
Founding, scaling, and exiting technology ventures across digital engineering, SaaS, and commercialized software products.
From the field
Due diligence, deal-making & the occasional bullet dodged.
A sampling of M&A and technical due diligence engagements — the deals that closed cleanly, and the ones where a healthy dose of skepticism saved everyone a great deal of money (and embarrassment).
- Ecommerce Acquisition: Led the pre-sale due diligence and post-sale integration for an ecommerce client — making sure everything actually fit together after the cheque cleared.
- $8.6M Sale Side Acquisition: Handled intellectual property assignments and due diligence for an $8.6M sale to a major insurer, keeping all the legal and technical ducks meticulously in a row.
- Patent & Specimen Cleanup: Conducted technical due diligence on an acquired software vendor to verify their patents and specimens were legit, valid, and not held together by digital tape.
- Incubator Strategy: Partnered with TechStars on development strategy to help early-stage companies figure out what to build before they spent all their seed money.
- Angel Network Pitch Evaluation: Teamed up with Alliance of Angels to audit pitch decks and separate genuine innovation from enthusiastic storytelling.
- Ghost Traffic Buster: Uncovered web traffic numbers in a sales brief so inflated that not even the most generous accounting principles could justify them.
- Tech Debt Archeologist: Audited “cutting-edge” codebases only to find legacy code, massive technical debt, and software components that belonged in a museum.
- AI Hype Deflator: Systematically popped the balloons of founders claiming to have a “groundbreaking AI strategy” when their product mix was barely using basic conditional logic.
- Stack Overflow Synthesizer: Exposed an IP nightmare where a seller’s proprietary code base was essentially a copy-paste mosaic of Stack Overflow snippets rather than actual intentional software development.
- HIPAA Horror Show: Caught a SaaS platform with severe PHI exposure where unvetted offshore dev teams — operating without a single BAA — were casually dumping production databases into the public root directory.
FDG Web
Founder, CEO & Executive Strategist · AcquiredScaled a boutique digital engineering agency from a solo venture into a 7-figure, 16+ person team of specialists delivering enterprise SaaS and high-stakes digital products nationwide. Led the firm through continuous growth culminating in a successful strategic acquisition.
- Strategic Growth & Enterprise Strategy: Directed overall agency vision, positioning, and full-lifecycle business operations, evolving the firm from bespoke web design to complex enterprise product development.
- Healthcare & HIPAA Compliance: Architected secure, SaaS-based digital health platforms and led complex HIPAA-compliant system integrations for enterprise healthcare clients.
- AI & Emerging SaaS Solutions: Championed product strategy and engineering for custom AI-driven applications and SaaS products targeted at high-growth technology and medical markets.
- E-Commerce Ecosystems: Oversaw design and technical implementation for custom Shopify apps and high-conversion storefronts built to handle complex merchant logistics and architecture.
- Full-Stack Technical Direction: Managed on-site engineering and design teams delivering custom PHP architectures, enterprise CMS platforms (WordPress, Drupal), and custom API integrations for nationwide clients.
Proposal Kit & TemplateKit
Co-Founder & Product Lead- Product Line Strategy: Developed and scaled a comprehensive suite of commercial contract templates, proposal software, agency briefing tools, and office automation wizards.
- GTM & Scale: Built a distribution ecosystem of over 5,000 global resellers and affiliates, including key distribution partners such as Internet.com, SitePoint, and Slashdot.
- E-Commerce Portfolio: Consolidated DTC and B2B software assets into ProposalKit.com and TemplateKit.com, licensing proprietary technology while selling enterprise multimedia, web, and email templates directly to consumers.
Cyber-I
Co-Founder & Technical Sales Lead- Asset Acquisition & Innovation: Acquired E-Image Development to pioneer early mass-market CD-ROM interactive “Business Cards” and developed a multi-channel tracking and attribution platform for physical media (kiosks, CD-ROMs, flash drives).
- Enterprise Client Roster: Pitched, implemented, and provided sales engineering expertise for flagship hospitality brands, including Hilton, Hyatt, Four Seasons, and Best Western.
- Corporate Restructuring: Spun off agency services into FDG Web while direct-licensing the proprietary attribution technology to enterprise clients.
Easy Quizbuilder / Easy Multimedia Builder
Product Architect & Strategy- Enterprise SCORM Platform: Designed and commercialized a specialized CMS to build and manage SCORM-compliant e-learning applications and automated certification engines.
- Client Portfolio: Secured and deployed enterprise contracts for high-compliance entities, including the U.S. Postal Service, state government agencies, and higher education institutions.
Realty Mogul
Early Equity Investor & Advisor- Early Prototype & Solutions Architecture: Built their first proto-type all the way to production platform and series B round of funding and 8B in property value on the platform.
- Team Scaling & Training: Interviewed and hired technical staff after funding and provided guidance and solutions architecture for year afterwards.
- Production Support & Development: Provided ongoing support and development for the production platform.
Incident Tactics
Early Equity Partner & Technical Lead- Crisis Simulation Software: Partnered with board members—including regional broadcast personality Steve Pool—to design and build the prototype simulation engine and presentation layer for crisis-management applications.
- Market Impact: Engineered high-pressure, interactive software packages enabling school districts and government agencies across the Pacific Northwest to model emergency response protocols.
- Pilots & Deployment: Facilitated institutional pilot programs with Puget Sound educators and municipal organizations to test real-time decision-making frameworks.
Templates.ws
Founder- Digital Asset: Developed a targeted digital marketplace specializing in modular, small-format components for web and multimedia applications.