About me
I’m an entrepreneur, technology executive, and founder of Mirigos. I also advise founders and executives on how to run their businesses, work through problems, and prepare for what comes next.
Entrepreneur is the word I put first. To me, entrepreneurship means seeing a problem and finding a way to solve it. It also means recognizing when something needs to change, including something you came up with yourself. That last part is usually the hardest.
How I got here
I came to the United States in 1991 at seventeen, speaking no English. I went to community college, learned the language, and spent a lot of time taking computers apart and figuring out how they worked.
At the time, I worked nights as a security guard at a San Francisco radio and television station. A conversation with an employee there led to an introduction at Autodesk, where I got hired as a QA engineer.
QA suited the way my brain works. You have to imagine what someone might do with a program, including things its developers never expected, and find out where it breaks. I liked finding those problems.
From there, I moved into software development and eventually into management, director, VP, and CTO roles. I built startups of my own, some successful and some unsuccessful, and went through several acquisitions. Most of my career has been in smaller companies, often joining among the first ten employees.
Why I built Mirigos
Leading engineering departments meant working with remote teams around the world. I often joke that I’ve worked with teams on every continent except Antarctica.
I kept seeing problems in outsourcing relationships. As an engineer, I wanted to understand why they happened and what we could change about the way those relationships worked.
While serving as a VP of Engineering, I tried a different approach to building a remote team. That approach became the foundation of Mirigos.
Today, we help companies hire engineers who join their teams directly. The client chooses the people and manages their work. We handle recruiting and the employment side of the relationship.
The work I do with founders
A lot of my advising comes down to one question: how do you turn what you’re building into a business?
A startup needs room to experiment. It also needs to understand its customers, revenue, costs, and the problem someone is willing to pay it to solve. You can keep experimenting while taking those questions seriously.
I work with founders and executives on operations, customer and investor relationships, and company structure. I also help international founders think through how their businesses fit the US market.
My role is to bring another perspective, connect information that may seem unrelated, and help people understand the consequences of a decision. I’m direct, and I ask a lot of questions. Often, the problem we end up working on is more specific than the one we started with.
How I think about people
I hire for the ability to solve problems, take ownership, and learn. Today’s technical skills matter, but they will change. I want people who can change with them.
I also want people who are comfortable disagreeing with me. I’m quite capable of waking up with a new idea and deciding we should do something differently. Having someone say, “We heard you. Sit down. We’re going to continue doing what we’re doing,” can be very useful.
That applies to business relationships, too. I don’t approach every conversation looking for a transaction. Some of my best working relationships began with two people who simply found each other interesting.