I build technical companies before the category is obvious.

I started a BBS in 1993, at eleven years old: dial-in, message boards, file areas, and live chat between whoever happened to be online. Real-time digital communication, in other words — years before most people had any of it. ICQ arrived in November 1996, AIM in May 1997, Facebook in 2004. Email existed, but had not yet reached most homes. The tools were primitive and the audience was local, but the behavior was the same one social platforms would run on later: people did not just want access to computers, they wanted somewhere to be.

From 1994 to 2000, ShiaNet was a community dialup ISP built when internet access was still local, physical, and unfamiliar: modem banks, phone lines, and a support number people actually called. Owosso Networks was the other half of the same build — webhosting for the businesses and people arriving on those lines. Access got a town online; hosting gave it somewhere to put things. Both required more than connectivity: infrastructure, support, education, and trust. ShiaNet was sold to EarthLink in 2000.

DeadAIM, which I co-developed, arrived when instant messaging became one of the first truly mass-market internet behaviors. A contact list, status indicator, and message window introduced millions to persistent identity, presence, and real-time communication. Small interface decisions could change how a huge number of people experienced the internet — enough that AOL acquired it in 2002. Six years earlier I had been running the same behavior on a BBS for a few dozen people at a time; this was the same idea with millions of people on it.

At eighteen, under the umbrella of Andrews Hooper Pavlik PLC — a large regional accounting firm, formerly the Lansing and Saginaw offices of Ernst & Young — I led network security and infrastructure consulting for banks, universities, and businesses throughout the mid-west. The work was manual security assessments: go in, test, write it up, leave. Do enough of them and the flaw in the model becomes hard to unsee — the network you just certified starts changing the moment you walk out the door.

Three years of manual assessments left me with one argument: security should be continuously tested, not periodically assumed. So in 2003 I founded Periscan, and with it the concept of Continuous Security Validation — the first always-on autonomous penetration testing platform, built years before the market had language for continuous validation, BAS, exposure management, attack surface management, or automated offensive security. It was also one of the earliest PCI compliance scanning vendors, helping organizations continuously assess external networks and applications, identify exposures, and prove posture beyond manual, point-in-time testing. I sold it in 2005 and joined Barracuda. The industry came round eventually, and gave the idea names: Gartner introduced breach and attack simulation in its 2017 Hype Cycle, fourteen years later, and continuous threat exposure management in 2022, nineteen years later. I had the thesis right in 2003; the industry took nearly two decades to catch up.

▸ Periscan on WLNS, 2006

From 2005 to 2013, I joined Barracuda as its first product manager and later served as Director of New Products and VP of Strategy. I built the Barracuda Load Balancer and CudaTel, launched the Barracuda Web Filter, and acquired the Barracuda SSL VPN. Products I launched grew to $200M+ in recurring revenue. I built a major social and brand presence, and established the Ann Arbor R&D center — 200 people, home to two of our products and half of the support organization.

▸ IPO company pitch

▸ CudaTel phone smash, circa 2011 — a product I built

SignalWire is the company built around FreeSWITCH, the open source softswitch at its core. FreeSWITCH opened to the public on 1 January 2006 — two years before Twilio was founded, and nearly three before Twilio shipped its first voice API. So this was not a company chasing a category someone else had proved: the infrastructure underneath it was already running in production, at scale, years before programmable communications had a market name. As Founder, CMO, and COO I worked across product, positioning, marketing, PLG, and fundraising. The company grew beyond $20M ARR and hit periods of 70% YoY growth — and we raised more than $42M through Series B, pitching Sand Hill Road.

▸ 2022 reel

▸ advanced communications explainer

▸ Snoop on SignalWire Work

▸ introducing the Mobile Command Center

AyeAI explored enterprise AI infrastructure at the intersection of data access, model orchestration, retrieval, security, and control. The thesis: AI becomes useful when it connects safely to business data, explains its answers, and fits real workflows. The technology was compelling, but the market pull was not strong enough to continue — so I chose to wind it down.

▸ AI orchestration platform

From 2025 to 2026, I have advised and served as CMO for the #1 cybersecurity companies in Poland and Turkey — Fudo Security and Picus Security. Both had the same problem: a strong product, and no U.S. market position. At Fudo I rebuilt the global marketing function, refreshed brand and messaging, and built the top-of-funnel machinery; at Picus I worked on U.S. positioning and category relevance in breach & attack simulation and exposure validation. What travels across a border is not the product — it is Silicon Valley GTM discipline, brand strategy, positioning, and executive storytelling.

▸ Fudo Security rebrand — website motion render

Sean Ventures is where product judgment, technical curiosity, category development, AI leverage, and go-to-market meet a willingness to test ideas against reality. The goal is not to manufacture a large organization around every idea — it is to build enough of the product, distribution, and operating system to discover which ideas deserve to become companies.