Built different.
On purpose.

Building technology before I could drive

My career in technology didn’t start with a degree. It started in middle school. Between 8th grade and high school, I began working with the technology director at Kingsway Regional School District, building computer labs, imaging machines, crimping Cat5 cables, and managing network infrastructure.

By high school I was working in the technology department during my study halls instead of taking electives, and hired as paid staff during summers. I built automated Windows XP deployment images, installed rack servers, configured SAN and NAS storage, managed phone systems, and maintained a district-wide VCR distribution system. This was production infrastructure serving an entire school district, at 14.

At 16, before I could drive, I was building websites, SaaS platforms, and marketing materials for National Paintball Supply during the dot-com boom. Not student projects. Real business systems for a real company, generating real revenue.

First venture

I launched Absolute Rides in my early twenties, years before Shopify existed and while Amazon was still primarily a bookstore. It was a 10,000-SKU e-commerce auto parts operation with dropship fulfillment across the US. I never warehoused a single product, but the internet presence made us look like a major operation.

That presence attracted car dealerships, who began sourcing rims and accessories in bulk for new inventory. What started as consumer retail became a B2B, relationship-driven business. The foundational insight: visibility creates opportunity, often from directions you don’t anticipate.

Negative thirty

$30K in debt after the 2008 crash wiped out my first company, funded by a home equity loan against my parents’ house. What followed: 16 to 18 hour days working full-time at a consulting firm, driving straight to my tattoo shop for evening appointments, hitting the gym at 9pm, then remodeling a fixer-upper until 1am.

I paid off the debt in a year, bought my first house at 29 with $3K down, and flipped three houses while building businesses simultaneously. The grind nobody sees is what makes everything after it possible.

Fourteen years across three industries

I operated an independent technology consultancy serving organizations across education, beauty and wellness, and law enforcement. This wasn’t venture-backed sprints. It was sustained, client-facing work that required understanding how fundamentally different organizations evaluate, adopt, and resist technology.

That cross-industry fluency became my most significant competitive advantage. Building systems for school districts, a multi-location salon and spa operation, and police departments develops pattern recognition that single-industry specialists don’t have. You learn to distinguish between solutions that survive contact with real users and solutions that only survive a pitch deck.

Engineering meets entrepreneurship

I’ve been in the tattoo industry for over 20 years. At Rowan University I combined that with engineering, designing a next-generation tattoo machine in SolidWorks, building prototypes, and placing second in Rowan’s Business Plan Competition. The brand I built around the concept, Hydravolve, ranked at the top of search results for tattooing before a physical shop existed. In 2011 I opened Hydravolve Studios, applying the same playbook I’d used in tech: engineer the product, build the brand digitally, then commercialize.

In 2018 I launched Valhalla Artworks under sole ownership, building on every operational lesson from Hydravolve with full creative and business control. It remains open and consistently top-rated. Running these proved something I’d always believed: the fundamentals of building a great company are the same whether you’re writing code or running a shop floor.

Scrypster

I founded Scrypster as a technology consultancy and education platform. The YouTube channel grew past 10,000 subscribers, the SaaS practice took on clients across industries, and it became the vehicle through which I built in public, sharing real engineering knowledge with a growing audience while running production projects for real organizations.

From developer to Director

A national SaaS company brought me on as a developer. Within 30 days I was Director of Engineering. The promotion wasn’t political. It was operational. I identified critical architectural gaps, proposed a restructuring plan, and demonstrated the technical leadership the organization needed.

Over the next several years I scaled that engineering team from 5 to 25 across distributed locations, managed the full AWS infrastructure, and built the technical foundation behind a national SaaS platform. The team became a freight train, shipping faster than stakeholders could define requirements. When the company went through a major bank acquisition, I led the engineering organization through the transition.

Public safety infrastructure

Online Policing Solutions built NPS-AID, the National Public Safety Alert & Information Database. It is designed to integrate with the systems law enforcement already uses, including CAD, 911 dispatch and patrol records, to surface critical information about disabled and vulnerable individuals before officers make contact.

NPS-AID is the digital evolution of the Blue Envelope program: real-time, covering all disabilities, and voluntary at no cost to participants. It now has participants in more than 40 states. The first deployment integrated directly with CAD and 911 dispatch went live in Cumberland County, New Jersey. Where paper programs create awareness, that integration creates actionable intelligence at the point of encounter.

This is the intersection of everything I’ve built over two decades: the cross-industry perspective, the platform architecture expertise, and the understanding of how law enforcement actually operates.

Beyond the work

I serve on the board of Online Policing Solutions and maintain advisory relationships across the public safety technology sector.

Outside of technology and business, I’m a competitive USPSA shooter. I believe the strongest leaders maintain a deliberate practice of curiosity across disciplines, not just within their domain. I’m direct, I’m strategic, and I build things that matter.