Joe B.

I help founders and CEOs understand what's actually happening inside their engineering teams—and fix it. Whether it's broken processes, team dynamics, technical debt, or simply the wrong people in the wrong seats, I diagnose the real problem and get things moving.

I've built and exited a startup (TeePublic, acquired by RedBubble), scaled engineering teams from 1 to 30+, and learned to speak both engineer and executive fluently. Before tech, I spent years doing improv comedy at UCB in New York—skills that turn out to be surprisingly useful when you're reading a room, navigating conflict, and figuring out why a team isn't shipping.

Based in Chicago. Currently CTO at Togetherhood.

What I do

Debugging Your Engineers

You're spending real money on engineering and not seeing results. Standups happen, sprints close, but progress feels glacial. I help CEOs and founders understand what's actually going on—whether it's team dynamics, broken processes, technical debt, or simply the wrong people in the wrong seats. Sometimes you need an outsider who speaks engineer and executive to diagnose the real problem.

Fractional/Interim CTO

I've worked at startups for over 15 years. I can help you build your MVP, establish engineering culture, scale your team, and grow your company. Having gone from being the only technical employee at a startup to scaling engineering teams to dozens of people, I've been hands-on with business challenges, the hard technical problems, and the even harder human ones.

Web Application Performance

Taking TeePublic from 0 to 50+ million page views per month, I've learned a lot about how to build performant web applications. I can help you identify bottlenecks, optimize infrastructure, and build systems that scale—without over-engineering for problems you don't have yet.

Marketplace Strategy and Operations

Marketplaces are hard and sustaining them harder. Having gone zero to one with the largest print-on-demand marketplace for independent artists, I can help you build and grow your marketplace—from creator acquisition and content curation to feed health and catalog management at scale.