Twenty years of product work. Ten years building software for small businesses.

I'm Stephen Martin and I started my own practice many years ago, focused on freelance design. In 2026, I decided to restart my practice to offer senior product and tech judgment, coupled with AI fluency that's changed what one person can do alone.

I've spent the past 15 years or so inside two companies whose entire job was building software for very small businesses. Before that I was a designer, then a PM, then a director. The pattern was always the same: one underlying system that has to fit very different shapes of small business.

Joined as a senior PM, left as a director of product. The work was the back-office tooling small businesses use to run email, ads, postcards, and websites — the less-glamorous side of the marketing platform. By the end I was running the team that owned the cross-product customer record.

Led product on the seller side — the apps and back-office tools that ran restaurants, retailers, and service businesses end-to-end. Same lesson, different industries: one underlying platform that has to fit very different operators.

A restaurant on Square is not a barbershop on Square is not a coffee roaster on Square. But it's one product, one stack, one team. That's the lens I bring to the practice.

The practice is one person. No team. I work up to twenty hours a week with each engaged client, structured across two or three dedicated days, with one full day held for on-site visits. Engagements come in three shapes — Audit, Sprint, Retainer — and most start with a one-week Audit.

AI fluency is a real part of the offer. I use Claude Code, Cursor, and a handful of custom tooling to ship at a pace that would have needed two or three people two years ago. That doesn't mean every engagement is "AI work." It means the practice is economically possible at this scale.

Independent music, a physical product, two apps, and a small e-commerce operation. They keep me building between engagements and feed back into how I show up for clients. They live on Projects.