Rick Manelius is a startup CXO and AI Training Fellow with 13 years of experience turning struggling teams and products into sustainable businesses, having led multiple turnarounds that now generate roughly $20M/year in aggregate revenue. He blends hands-on technical leadership—from building award-winning NFT hardware and multi-chain provenance software at Atomic Form to scaling web and mobile platforms—with executive-level operations, fundraising, and product strategy. A Techstars All-Star mentor and author of Save Your Startup, he codifies hard-won playbooks for founders and has coached 200+ leaders on hiring, fundraising, and resourceful execution. Trained as an MIT PhD in Materials Science, Rick uniquely applies rigorous research thinking to product discovery and validated learning, running 100+ customer interviews to pivot business models. He’s actively advising AI startups and taking fractional CXO roles where tech, high-growth strategy, and leadership intersect.
13 years of coding experience
10 years of employment as a software developer
Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) Materials Science and Engineering, Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) Materials Science and Engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Contributions:1 PR, 4 pushes, 2 branches in 11 months
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