i build things
I'm a physicist, software engineer, entrepreneur and mechanic.
Over the course of my career, I've built experimental equipment, written software, started companies, manufactured consumer products, built a beverage factory and repaired industrial motors.
Now I'm putting all of it together.
buildshift
Making automation affordable for the businesses that need it.
Most automation is built for companies with big budgets.
BuildShift starts somewhere else:
the job.
We go onto the floor, understand the work, identify what is costing too much, and build a machine to do it better.
Software. Electronics. Mechanics. Controls.
One problem at a time.
a career that doesn’t look like a career
I studied physics at Tufts University, graduating magna cum laude in 1987.
I worked in experimental physics at Tufts and Brookhaven National Laboratory, then moved to France to develop scientific software at École Polytechnique.
After that came years of software engineering and systems work.
Then entrepreneurship.
In 1995, I started Dolce Mia, a consumer-products company that eventually became a California-made bath and body business.
In 2016, I founded Mountjoy Enterprises and entered the emerging cannabis beverage industry with Mountjoy Sparkling. We later developed a hemp-derived CBD beverage that was distributed nationally.
The regulatory and economic environment changed. So did the businesses.
Eventually, Mountjoy Enterprises became primarily a small beverage manufacturing and co-packing operation.
And then something unexpected happened.
I went back to work on machines.
The detour
When the technology market weakened, I found myself working as an electric motor mechanic.
At first, it looked like a step backward.
It wasn't.
I had grown up around machinery. As a young man I had worked on engines, boats and motors. My education had given me physics and electronics. My career had given me software and business.
Now I was learning industrial machinery from the inside.
Motors.
Pumps.
Drives.
Controls.
Electrical systems.
Mechanical systems.
And suddenly the pieces fit.
The IDEA
There are millions of businesses doing work that could be automated.
But many of them can't afford conventional industrial automation.
They don't need a $500,000 automation project.
They need a machine that solves their particular problem and pays for itself.
That is the idea behind BuildShift.
Don't start with the machine.
Start with the work.
Figure out what needs to be done.
Then build it.
THREE BUSINESSES. ONE OBSESSION.
BUILDSHIFT
Custom automation for businesses that have been priced out of traditional automation.
MOUNTJOY SPARKLING
A small beverage manufacturing and co-packing operation helping emerging beverage companies get products into production.
DOLCE MIA
A California-made bath and body company—and a laboratory for developing physical consumer products, including Hair Ball, our shampoo-on-a-rope.
Because robots need real people