After 20+ years building software used by millions, from AI interviewing to college admissions, I've learned that the choices a product makes for people matter as much as its features. I help teams find those choices, measure them, and make them good for users and the business.
About
I've spent more than two decades building, scaling, and commercializing SaaS platforms used by millions of people, starting with a university's first online enrollment systems.
At CollegeNET, as Vice President of Emerging Technologies, I invented, architected, and launched StandOut, an AI-powered video interview platform used for practicing and interviewing, and took it from prototype to more than 100 universities, including some of the top schools in the world.
I built it to level the playing field and to show there is a person behind the application, not another row of data in a CRM. Its approach to feedback was influenced by my time teaching English in Japan to students from age 2 to 80+.
My 2012 asynchronous video interview patent has been cited over 100 times, including by HireVue, Google, IBM, and Microsoft.
I hold 12 issued patents and co-created the Social Mobility Index, which ranks universities on how well they advance economic mobility.
Today I run Bolton Consulting and curate The Power of Defaults, a museum of how defaults shape behavior, because so much of what happens to people in a product is decided before they arrive.
I bring a beginner's mind and over 20 years of experience, so I can see your problems from an angle that's hard to find from inside the work. I work with teams that want the choices their product makes for people to be deliberate, measured, and good for both users and the business.
Services
A few focused ways I help, whether you're questioning the choices your product makes for people, scaling a platform that's outgrowing itself, or protecting the ideas you've worked hard to invent.
Every signup flow, settings page, pricing screen, and AI feature ships with choices already made, and almost no one measures whether users keep them. I audit those defaults, instrument them so keeping one shows up in your data, test better ones against guardrails like churn and refunds, and set up a light review so the next default is a decision. See how it works
Defaults / Behavioral DesignExecutive-level technical guidance for SaaS and subscription platforms, from someone who scaled one from prototype to hardened, multi-tenant national SaaS. That includes AI where it actually fits: LLM integrations, agentic workflows, retrieval over your own data, and evals that prove it's working. What a model suggests, most people accept, so I treat AI output with the same care as any other default.
SaaS / AII don't just advise on IP. I've built it. My patents are cited by HireVue, Google, IBM, and Microsoft, and one is foundational prior art across the AI-interview industry. I can help teams spot what might be patentable, and turn invention into durable competitive advantage.
Patents / IPGetting Started
Usually it's a signup, a settings page, or a renewal screen that isn't doing what you expected. We talk for half an hour, free. If there's something worth doing, I send a short written proposal with a fixed scope and a fixed price.
A good first project is a defaults audit of that flow: every choice it makes for users, whether you're measuring it, and what I'd change first. You keep the findings and the event schema whether or not we keep working together. Product, AI, and IP work starts the same way, with one concrete problem instead of an open-ended retainer.
A few lines is plenty. If it sounds like something I can help with, we'll set up a call. If not, I'll say so.