Background

I joined an organization that could not productize, because operations and the non-functional work were being ignored, and that blocked every attempt to ship. I did a deep scan, found real security and stability risks, laid out a plan, and had it in order in four months: availability above 99%, deploys roughly 70% faster.

Then I took on engineering leadership to get a real, workable product released. That delivery is what convinced our investors to extend the runway. Later, when the CTO seat emptied and left behind a set of building blocks and a strong product vision, I assembled it into a shipped version three and landed the first serious paying customer.

AlefEdge could not make the full turn. The market was hard and the sunk capital was heavy, and in the end the company did not make it on its own. The delivery held up every time it was needed, and when it wound down I stayed through to the end and handled the transfer of the assets.

I came in as an outside consultant on a platform architecture that was contested and stuck. Strong opinions, no decision. I structured it into a criteria-based evaluation and ran a proof of concept against three candidates, which turned the deadlock into a clear, defensible choice the group could get behind. Then I led the implementation to its first release in six months. Swisscom hired me to build and run the permanent platform team, 14 engineers, around it.

Three acquired companies were operating as three islands, with a portfolio that was losing money. I was hired to build a coherent offering out of it. Within weeks I concluded the real problem was structural, not a matter of packaging, and I said so to the CEO.

I got the mandate to rebuild the portfolio, the technology foundation, and the go-to-market, and to pivot the business model from hardware sales and advertising revenue-share to a paid platform plus professional services. The business built on that foundation kept growing after I left, and was later acquired by ZetaDisplay.

I am Dutch, which tends to show up as a willingness to name the problem out loud. I will navigate an organization carefully, but I will not pretend the hard thing is not there. Stakeholders who want a straight read value that. The ones who only want reassurance usually do not, and that is fine.