I think it is funny how we present different stories of ourselves for different audiences. For this audience, I will present my story in the way that is best of interest to you: "Why would Connor be a good advisor for my tech company?"

I know how to take a vision & make it a production-ready system. With AI, going from idea to prototype is very do-able these days. Going from a prototype to something that can scale, is secure, can be maintained & has a good foundation to build new features on… that is something that requires proper technical expertise.

I have 7+ years of experience doing so… across roles as a founding engineer, a tech lead, an engineering manager, & now as a founder building a product from ideation to launch. I have seen product teams from different angles: someone else's vision, my own vision, venture-backed startups, & a bootstrapped product, where I handled the building of the product mostly solo.

My value is in the ability to context switch across product, design, & engineering… not because the roles should be collapsed into one or considered as one, but because I have had to learn & wear these different hats given the stage & size of the company I was at. I know how a weak product process creates downstream engineering problems or solves the wrong problems. I know how designing a user experience is something that requires skill & thought, rather than just being something any engineer can build out. I know how to identify where a team is losing efficiency or misaligning within these structures, without sacrificing the quality or the human experience of doing the work.

What I advise on

Product process: going from a goal to a fleshed-out product spec to prototype to high-fidelity design. I have used the Google Design Sprint & now use my own iterated version of it. I know how to excavate a vision & break it into things that can actually be communicated & executed on.

Design to engineering handoff: how to create a design & spec that an engineer can translate into a technical design & execution plan without losing anything in translation.

Engineering execution: how to take a design & product spec & turn it into a technical design doc that can be broken into milestones, sprints, tickets, & prompts. Plus, how to own the rollout & maintenance of a feature.

AI in your workflow: how to actually use AI tooling in a way that elevates your team rather than creating false confidence or slop. I have been doing this for 1.5+ years & have iterated my process consistently. I am pro-conscious use of AI, as infrastructure & tooling, not as a replacement for expertise or quality.

Lean teams: how to help individuals who need to wear more than one hat do it without burning out. How to context switch properly between roles without letting the bias of one bleed into another.

Hiring Process / Evaluation: I have 4+ years of engineering hiring experience (system design interviews, coding interviews, behavioral interviews, data structures & algorithms).

Who I work with

Earlier stage start-ups varying in size. I’m open to conversations based on the use cases. For example:

  • If you are a non-technical founder trying to get from prototype to production & need support with how to move forward with hiring engineers or a plan for getting the product from where it’s at to production.

  • If you’re a small team at a start-up trying to ship better with fewer people.

  • OR if you’re a company trying to figure out what AI actually means for how you build your product & use it within your team.

Note: I will only work with companies aligned with conscious use of AI, in their workflows & in their products. I am not interested in working with companies using technology to exploit users or ship fast cash grabs. I think technical companies have a responsibility to reduce unnecessary usage of LLM’s & shaping consumer behavior around it.

Experience

8+ years building production systems across the full stack, including mobile (React Native, iOS, Android), web (React, Ruby on Rails), & cloud infrastructure (AWS, Supabase). 4+ years of engineering hiring experience (system design interviews, coding interviews, behavioral interviews, data structures & algorithms).

Education: Computer Science & Engineering, University of Iowa.

EDO, Inc. — Data & analytics company for convergent TV advertising, works with major networks, advertisers, movie studios. Grew from new grad to leading the product engineering team.

Software Engineer → Tech Lead → Engineering Manager. Led the product engineering team, reporting directly to the CTO. Managed all client-facing platforms, collaborating with PM’s, designers, media analytics, marketing, backend engineering, infra, data engineering, & data science teams. Built internal tooling, client dashboards, & a dynamic reporting system used by media analysts to produce weekly client reports.

BrightGo — All-in-one platform for commercial cleaning companies (operations, payroll, accounting, etc).

Founding Engineer. Worked across the full stack (web, backend, mobile), with end-to-end ownership of projects (issue tracking system, timesheet review). From leading the product design process, to prototyping, to working with an agency for high-fidelity designs, to engineering build, & managing the rollout for clients. Ran client calls for product research, user interviews, & customer success on rollout. Worked very closely with CEO & CTO.

Pearl Music — Music discovery platform that blends social & organic exploration (no AI or algorithms) for digital music & concerts.

Co-Founder, CEO. Built the full product (engineering, product, design, business operations) from my vision to a stable, production-ready app on iOS & Android with a paid subscription tier. Conducted market research, pricing analysis, & user research to shape the product direction & subscription model. Built investor pitches & ran quarterly planning.

How I think & work

The State of the Market: Social x Music x Tech — The pursuit of efficiency & scale within these industries is imploding upon itself.

State of Mobile Subscriptions (2026) — How I built Mobile Subscriptions without exclusively using the Apple & Google billing systems, while still being compliant.

The Co-Builder Postmortem — On what a production outage taught me about working with AI responsibly.

What you get

  • Observation period: before making recommendations, I will sit in on your actual process. Standups, design reviews, handoffs, whatever is relevant. Recommendations come from watching how your team actually works, not from a generic framework applied from the outside.

  • Advice tailored to your specific company needs & your specific product.

  • A playbook for the creation process that balances efficiency, quality, & human touch. Example templates for different steps of the workflow.

  • Initial hands-on work & guidance for any implementation of these things provided.

If you feel like we are aligned & my skillset could be valuable to your company, please reach out via email (ceschrich42@gmail.com) or on LinkedIn for an intro call where we can discuss your needs. **Pricing is dependent on company size & scope of engagement — equity arrangements or hourly payment are considered on a case by case basis.