Lance Hodges
Product, systems, and business architecture for founders
I work with founders who are already shipping and growing, and are starting to feel how expensive the next decisions are about to become.
When a company is small, you can fix almost anything later. Once it is real, every wrong hire, every premature system, and every unclear bet compounds.
This is the phase where small decisions stop being small.
You have users. You have revenue. Your team is no longer three people in a room.
Things still work, but they are harder to change.
Roadmaps are starting to lock in. Hiring is starting to feel irreversible. Architecture decisions are beginning to shape what you can and cannot become.
Founders usually describe this as "busy."
What it really is: commitment.
I help founders make fewer, better decisions, in practice, not in theory.
I work across product, engineering, and the business to answer questions like:
Most teams at this stage are shipping a lot. Very few are choosing deliberately.
Technical (fingers on keyboard + strategic + management), culture, leadership — there wasn't a facet of the business where Lance's opinions and input weren't welcome.— Darcy Naunton, Investor
The ability to ask 'why' before committing resources to any problem, big or small, was hugely influential to Tractor's journey.
I am direct and commercially minded, and not interested in being polite at the cost of being useful.
They build as if they already know what company they are going to be.
They lock in teams, systems, and roadmaps before they have enough signal to justify those commitments.
The result is not just wasted engineering. It is years of pushing in a direction that never quite pays off.
My job is to help you avoid that.
Most leadership teams still plan as if building software is slow and expensive.
It is not.
AI has collapsed the distance between an idea and something real. You can now prototype, test, and iterate in days what used to take weeks. That changes how you should staff, scope, sequence work, and decide what is even worth building.
If you still plan like it is 2019, you will over-hire, over-build, and under-focus.
This is not about "adding AI." It is about understanding that the cost of production has changed, which changes the entire game.
I have spent years inside real products doing the work that actually makes companies exist.
I am hands-on when it helps, including code, architecture, and product.
Lance is one of the few people who can genuinely hang with engineers in the weeds, understand the real constraints, and then zoom out and translate that into clear product and business direction.— Matty Evans, Engineer
I have designed APIs and data models, shaped UI and UX, written customer-facing copy, chosen stacks and infrastructure, built billing, analytics, and event tracking, and sat in front of customers explaining how things work.
I have also been on the other side of the table, working through budgets, investors, boards, and the uncomfortable tradeoffs that turn products into businesses.
I care just as much about how a product makes money as how it is built. Once a company is real, those are the same conversation.
That is why I can move between strategy and implementation without losing what matters.
I work with one company at a time.
Typically about three days a week, for three to six months to start. Embedded enough to see what is really happening, but focused on the decisions that shape the company, not running delivery.
I will get my hands dirty when it helps. My real value is in helping you make calls you will not regret later.
You are clear about:
Your team is aligned. Your roadmap makes sense. You move faster because you are not second-guessing every decision.
You are not just busy. You are building the right thing.
If you are already moving, feeling the weight of your next decisions, and want someone on your side who helps you make them with clarity: