Product Management

Spoke recently with a VC backing a battery-electric construction equipment startup that’s quietly acquiring firms in “boring” operational niches like site prep to control deployment and usage. It eliminates the friction of getting novel equipment into the field while capturing margin. Rather than waiting for contractors to spec unfamiliar hardware, they’re buying the contractors. This is a familiar play. Joby Aviation is building electric aircraft for their own airline. Waymo built a tightly controlled fleet operation to deliver mobility-as-a-service. Deploying autonomous, electric equipment isn’t just about selling, its about guaranteeing outcomes which often requires owning the stack initially. ...

In the spirit of vibe product management, here’s some writing from my corporate strategy course in Spring 2025 for which we were asked to choose a company with problems, analyze it internally and externally, then make suggestions for rejuvenation. Autodesk strategy report Autodesk faces an inflection point. While its financial performance and market penetration remain strong, its dependence on structural lock-in, legacy platforms, and extractive pricing is eroding its brand equity and exposing vulnerabilities to a wave of modular, cloud native, and open-source alternatives. The company must reframe its value proposition to foster trust, true openness, and renewed innovation. ...

Concetto was a prototype generative and computational design environment for AEC. It had high-performance Vulkan graphics with a portable React-like front end, on Windows and Linux for cloud services development. I was product management director, setting strategy and scaling up the teams of product managers, designers, and QA testers. Design explorationA platform for design optimization workflows. Image: © Glodon USA Software. It had interactive 3D modeling tools with a visual scripting environment and a design-space explorer for optimization. The graph and interactive tools worked interchangeably, with unified selection behavior for a fluid modeling experience. ...

A model trained on residential floor plans was used to create a sketch-based application for automatically drawing floor plans from building outlines. Program indicated by color, and the user could specify locations for doors and windows. The sketch app also had simple orthogonal and snap functionality. The model created plans in real-time while the user was drawing to give immediate feedback. It was then fed into models used to identify structural elements for downstream use in a building systems design prototype that used the Concetto platform. I was product manager for Glodon USA, originated the concept, gathered reference research such as House-GAN, and directed the AI research project. ...

A comprehensive set of Parasolid-based 3D solid modeling tools was created, leveraging D-Cubed 2D and 3D solvers. I oversaw the modeling system’s design, development, and testing, as well running go-to-market with beta user community, creating content, and supporting user events. Dimension-driven constraints for 2D sketches and 3D assemblies Works on all elements in the design file A design a system for parametric cells and templated placement Variables and parameters system In-model manipulation, precise input, integration with Accudraw and snapping Constraints and variablesDriving key parameters through variables allows creation of reusable parametric components. ...