ProCollective, Mindpool & VC Diligence

ProCollective: Co-founding & Building

As co-founder and CTO of ProCollective, I helped build a freelance management platform used by companies like Publicis Groupe. The challenge was designing a Rails-based product that served two very different user groups: freelancers managing their work and large organizations tracking projects and compliance.

• Product development: Worked closely with customers to turn messy, real-world workflows into simple, intuitive product experiences.
• Architecture decisions: Balanced speed of delivery with pragmatic architecture that kept options open as the company grew.
• Stakeholder collaboration: Learned to align technical roadmaps with business goals and communicate trade-offs clearly to non-technical co-founders and investors.

Advisory Work: Mindpool & Others

Alongside building ProCollective, I've advised companies like Mindpool and other startups navigating early-stage product development, architecture decisions, and team scaling.

• Product clarity: Helping founders clarify product vision and prioritize what to build (and what not to build).
• Technical strategy: Advising on architecture, technology choices, and migration paths that align with business goals.
• Team coaching: Helping engineering teams improve processes, code quality, and decision-making frameworks.

Technical Due Diligence for VCs

I've performed technical due diligence for venture capital firms evaluating early and growth-stage opportunities. This work involves assessing products, codebases, teams, and execution risk to support confident investment decisions.

• Codebase assessment: Evaluating code quality, architecture, technical debt, and long-term viability.
• Team evaluation: Assessing engineering team structure, skills, processes, and ability to scale.
• Risk analysis: Identifying technical risks, dependencies, and potential roadblocks to help investors make informed decisions.

Key Takeaways

• → Building a company from scratch teaches you to prioritize ruthlessly and ship outcomes over features.
• → Advisory work exposes you to diverse companies and problems, accelerating learning and sharpening pattern recognition.
• → Due diligence work forces you to quickly assess technical quality and risk — a valuable skill for any tech leader.
• → Working with investors and founders across different stages teaches you to think about technology as a means to business outcomes, not an end in itself.