Building has become easy. Deciding why to build hasn't.
I help founders make the hard calls before code. Fractional CTO when the fit is right.
You can sit down with an AI model on a Friday night and have something working before the weekend is over.
That's incredible, but it's also dangerous. When shipping is cheap, the expensive mistakes move upstream, into why you build, who it's for and ifit should exist at all. Those decisions haven't gotten any easier. If anything, they've gotten harder.
Helping founders get those decisions right is what 716 Ventures is all about.
What 716 Ventures offers founders
The Room
Vector Sigma, Discord, the library, and Room MCP — from vibe coding to a finished software loop, without inventing process alone.
Join The Room →The Blueprint
A hard look at product and business risk, where AI helps, and a written plan your team can run — with Chris directly.
Learn about The Blueprint →The Factory
What I'm shipping this week, what ships next, and the lessons along the way — live status, not a portfolio of old wins.
Visit The Factory →Mainstreet
A separate product for Western New York businesses that need a modern site — designed, built, and launched for a fixed price.
Learn about Mainstreet
Twenty-five years of building software
“Products rarely succeed because someone picked the perfect framework.”
They succeed because somebody made a handful of good decisions before the code ever existed. Because they understood the why.
I've been designing and building software for more than twenty-five years now. That's long enough to have watched this industry reinvent itself several times. Open source, mobile, cloud and now AI.
Every wave changed the tools. None of them changed the importance of making good decisions as early as possible.
