How I Operate

Four situations where the right move was not a technical one.

Give Me a Problem, I'll Solve It in 48 Hours

The call

Intro call with a Y Combinator-backed startup. Ten minutes in, misalignment - they were looking for a GTM person. I am not a GTM person. The founder started wrapping up.

The pitch

I told him: give me a problem. I will solve it within 48 hours. Then you can decide.

27 hours later

He gave me a problem. I solved it in 27 hours - scoped the architecture, directed the implementation, and deployed a working system. Not a mockup. A deployed product.

The outcome

He came back with an offer.

When the conversation is going sideways, offer proof instead of persuasion.

Nobody Told Me to Build This

During my internship at Textron, I talked to teams across the organization out of curiosity. Not because anyone asked me to. I was looking for problems I could help solve.

I found one: the marketing team was struggling to understand AEO - answer-engine optimization, the AI-search equivalent of SEO. They were evaluating a commercial tool quoted at roughly $100K/month.

I scoped the solution, designed the architecture, made every product and trust decision, and shipped a working MVP via AI-directed implementation. Then I demoed it to the Director of Data and Insights and the AI Council, and handed off the MVP and code.

The total cost of the commercial alternative: about $1.2M/year. Nobody asked me to do any of this.

The best projects are the ones nobody assigns you.

Reframing a Product Through Research

Before

A generic project-management tool. The roadmap reflected that framing. Stakeholders saw it as another PM app in a crowded market.

After

An employee-engagement platform built on real research. Product vision reframed. Roadmap shifted. Stakeholders changed their perspective on what the product actually was.

57 competitors analyzed. Connected with SHRM-association people. Read employee-engagement research. The roadmap shifted because the research said it should.

Research is how you find out whether you are building the right thing.

$0 Budget. 4 Early Adopters.

marketing budget

warm intros

early adopters

Worked on Prodkt at Crayond, an appliance-management product in its earliest stage. No existing users, no connections to potential customers. Ran market research, designed interview questions that surfaced real pain points, then cold-reached business owners directly. Individual, targeted outreach to people whose businesses matched the problem. Onboarded 4 early adopters - real businesses using the product, not signups that disappeared.

Early traction does not require a marketing budget.

Want to hear more? sam.richard@duke.edu