Work With Me
I am most useful where technical diligence, system design, and founder judgment intersect — especially when the surface story is frontier tech, but the real question is whether the system underneath is coherent.
I have been building software since the early 2000s. Spent five years at Meta across developer platform, identity, analytics, Instagram, and messaging partnerships. Shipped Talk & Comment from a side project into an AI-native voice platform across thirteen years. Co-founded INK + PORCELAIN, where I built the supply chain and commerce systems. Built and operate agent fleets in production — not demos, not prototypes, the kind that run while I sleep and escalate when they fail.
The pattern across all of it: I care about whether the thing actually works, not whether the deck says it should.
What I do
Architecture judgment. You have a system (or a plan for one) and you need someone who can read the real structure underneath the diagrams. I trace the stack: where the abstraction layers leak, where the failure modes hide, where the org chart and the dependency graph disagree.
AI infrastructure and agent systems. Not the "add AI to your product" kind. The kind where agents need orchestration, memory, failure recovery, and operational discipline. I run this in production daily and can tell you where your agent system will break before it does.
Technical diligence. You are evaluating a deal, a partnership, or a build-vs-buy decision and you need someone who can separate the pitch from the architecture. I read code, infrastructure, and team dynamics, then tell you what is real and what is narrative.
Founder-grade product thinking. Thirteen years of running a product company with no funding taught me what survives contact with users, regulators, and your own exhaustion.
What I don't do
I am not a fractional CTO. I do not take standing operator load. I am not a tokenomics analyst, a fund structuring advisor, or a general-purpose consultant who will nod along with your strategy deck.
If the work is pure finance, traditional project management, or anything where the answer lives in a spreadsheet rather than in the system's architecture, I am probably not your person.
How engagements work
Bounded. High-signal. Non-fragmenting.
A typical engagement: a focused sprint (days to weeks, not months), a clear deliverable, and an exit that leaves you with more clarity than you started with. I do not optimize for recurring retainers. I optimize for you not needing me again.
Proof of work
- Talk & Comment — Voice platform, est. 2013. AI-native v4 shipping now. No funding, paying customers, thirteen years of survival.
- Meta (2016–2021) — Developer platform, identity, analytics, Instagram, messaging partnerships. Watched the company scale from 17,000 to 63,000 employees. Learned where platforms fail humans.
- INK + PORCELAIN — Co-founded. Built the commerce and supply chain systems for rare art and one-of-a-kind objects.
- Forgeloop-kit — Open-source agentic build loops. The engine underneath everything I run.
- Africa Deep Tech Foundation — Board member. Frontier tech meets African markets.
- zakelfassi.com/blog — Essays that have a habit of predating reality.
Get in touch
If something here maps to a problem you are holding, reach out. If you are not sure, fifteen minutes will tell us both.
I read everything. I reply to things that are specific.