AI Product Leader · Operator · Disrupter
I build the AI products that actually ship.
Most companies are running AI pilots. I ship AI products. 15 years of VP of Product across Demandbase, Pendo, and Salesforce — $100M+ ARR built from 0-to-1, 25+ agents in production, delivery cycles cut from 90 to 14 days. CS degree. I code daily. I'm looking for the next hard problem.
$100M+
ARR built 0-to-1
25+
AI agents in production
15+
years in product leadership
#1
Gartner ABM ranking
Impatient
Speed, intensity, bias toward action. AI lets you move faster than ever. I do.
Courageous
Hard problems, persistent solutions. I work on things that haven't been solved yet — because that's where the leverage is.
Lean
No politics. No committees. One person with full-stack judgment. You get impact, not process.
How I Think
Principles
- AI pilots don't fail because of the tech. They fail because nobody owns the outcome. I own outcomes.
- The best AI products aren't prompts with a UI. They're systems — agents, evals, orchestration, feedback loops. I build those.
- Speed is a product decision. I cut delivery cycles from 90 to 14 days. That's not hustle, it's architecture.
- The exec who can't read the code is a liability. I read the code. I write the code. Then I go talk to the board.
Skills & Expertise
Work With Me
Fractional CPO for AI-era companies.
You need exec-level product leadership that can actually ship. Not a consultant with a slide deck. Someone who builds the roadmap, aligns the team, and gets AI into production. That's what I do.
AI Product Strategy
From blank page to shipped platform.
I've launched LLM and agentic AI products from 0-to-1 at Demandbase and Pendo — shipped in under 90 days, 33% enterprise adoption in 30 days. I define the roadmap, write the PRDs, and own delivery. Technical PM with a CS degree who can go deep on model serving, inference pipelines, and agent orchestration.
Agentic Systems
Multi-agent workflows that stick in production.
25+ agents live across Sales, Marketing, and Operations. I built the eval harness, governed the LLM outputs, and cut delivery cycles from 90 to 14 days. I've worked with RAG pipelines, vector search, Amazon Bedrock, and MCP — and I build with Claude Code and Cursor every day.
Platform & GTM
Developer platform to enterprise GTM.
I've owned developer-facing platforms at Salesforce (1B+ CI/CD executions/month, 11.5K engineers) and led cross-functional GTM motions that drove 15% win rate increases. Pricing, commercialization, API strategy, SDK adoption — I've done it at scale.
“Every zoo has a lion. The lion can't be tamed — they roar louder than the rest. You can't have a zoo without a lion, because that's what everyone goes there to see.”
“I would be REMISS to not give a large bucket of kudos/thanks to Chad who introduced us to Forrester WAY back in the early stages of this deal. This was the first step toward the culmination of the entire team's efforts.”
“You may be really changing this company fr fr!”
“I just got back from summer break to catch up on work and I look at the open MRs and most have your name. It's great to see PMs and Designers contributing. So in this case crazy is good, keep coding!”
What I'm Building
Currently Active
ItsDeductible Replacement
Intuit killed ItsDeductible and left millions of donors without a simple way to value their charitable donations. I'm building the open source replacement. Free, local-first, designed for real people doing their taxes.
View on GitHubLive · Marin Cake Studio
Agentic Marketing Suite
Agentic marketing and CRM tools for a local bakery — 5 new Google reviews per week, reduced inbound inquiries, 5 incremental orders per month. AI operations at the smallest possible scale.
See it liveProjects
Abandoned by Intuit
ItsDeductible Replacement
Open source donation tracker for tax deductions. Intuit shut down the original and left nothing behind.
View on GitHubLocal Infrastructure
Local AI Gateway
A custom Ollama wrapper and scheduling layer on a Mac mini. Persistent agent memory, local LLM routing, zero API costs.
View on GitHubWeb / AI Agents
chadholdorf.com
This site. Designed, built, and maintained entirely by AI agents. No manual HTML edits.
View on GitHubFrom the Blog
All postsSun Mar 22
Every Company Needs an Agent OS Strategy
The agent runtime layer is becoming infrastructure — just like Linux and Kubernetes before it. Companies that don't build a strategy around it will be caught flat-footed.
Read postSun Mar 22
We Hold Robots to a Standard We've Never Held Humans
Autonomous vehicles are held to an impossible standard while human drivers kill 40,000 people a year in the US — and that asymmetry is a policy failure, not a safety posture.
Read postSun Mar 22
The One Tool Test
If you can't name the commercial AI tool you brought into your organization this month, that's the answer.
Read postContact
If you're a founder or exec who needs a product leader who can actually ship AI products — not just advise on them — I want to hear from you. Also happy to talk to other builders.