Build Is Free Now. Deciding Isn't.
Decision Velocity
Build is nearly free. The scarce resource is now decision velocity. An operator on why the speed of deciding, not the size of the plan or budget, decides who wins.
James R. McCarthy
I go by Jim.
AI-native operating models produce startup build velocity at incumbent scale. Builder and product roles are converging. A small team with the right stack outruns a large team on legacy process.
Sitting COO with prior CTO ownership at PE backed and public company scale.
Writing
Everyone Builds
An operating view on AI
AI-native operating models let more people build at startup speed inside incumbent organizations. An operator's manifesto on continuous improvement, inverted bottlenecks, and human judgment elevated.
Track record
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AI-native facilities operating system in under three months; legacy scheduling rebuilt in a four-hour working session
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$495M P&L on a $600M+ platform — 2M+ work orders a year, 3,500+ service providers, 150,000+ technicians
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2.5 points of operating margin and $5M+ in structural savings through integration discipline and cost programs
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VixxoLink — brought in to deliver a program and product turnaround; more than two years late and over budget, launch in nine months
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Expanded the operating model to run and control performance across the full service-provider network
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VITA — technician virtual assistant in the field, raising proficiency and daily service capacity across the network
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Public-company CIO through restatement and SOX remediation — nine material weaknesses closed, six boards
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VEREIT private-to-public transition — $3.5B REIT to $27B public platform; FINRA broker-dealer environment, 26 Salesforce applications
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Pearson SuccessNet product turnaround — led operating infrastructure for the K-12 platform relaunch (2007)
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DHL M&A integration — Airborne data center consolidation, DHL Mexico, U.S. move San Francisco to Scottsdale, five-nines data centers and automated sort in Pennsylvania and Riverside
About
I am an operator with a technology background. I moved from building software to running operations at scale, and I think in systems, cadence, margin integrity, and closed loops.
I believe AI-native operating models let more people build at startup speed inside incumbent organizations. Not less process. More process, running faster, with human judgment on the decisions that matter.
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