On February 25, 2026, I sat down with an AI agent for the first time.

Before any of this I was the opposite of a software person. Licensed mechanical P.E. in North Carolina and South Carolina, HVAC design on pharmaceutical cleanrooms, then capital equipment sales, roughly $3M in revenue in 18 months. Today I am VP of business development at a carbon capture company: I took an industrial CO₂ plant from construction to beverage-grade qualified production, and I carry the offtake LOI book. The fleet exists because I needed leverage, not because I needed a hobby.

Small teams are home. In my day job I am the BD lead, the plant-startup engineer, and the toolsmith, usually in the same afternoon.

What I bring is the pairing: I can build the AI employee, and I can also sit across from the client who is buying it, scope it in their language, and close. I know what a cabinetry shop's estimator actually worries about, because I have been an estimator and I have sold to them.