Built by a founder who needed it first.
I am Patrick. I have spent the last five years building digital products at Iron Mountain, ServiceNow, and TakeUp. Before that, a decade designing physical products. The Tortuga Outbreaker has been Wirecutter's #1-rated carry-on for four years running. Modern Industry, my first company, started with a $5K investment and reached a $500K run rate in three years.
What both careers have in common: you only know if you got it right when people keep choosing the product. Stryder is the same bet, applied to my own business.
Why I'm building Stryder.
I started in DTC. I bootstrapped Modern Industry, turning a $5K investment into a $500K run rate and two Kickstarter campaigns by the end of year three. Then five years at Tortuga as Director of Product, shipping products that got written up in the New York Times and held the top spot on the Wirecutter carry-on backpack list for four years.
I knew how to make things people loved. When I left Tortuga, I started Heylow, a brand I had wanted to start for nearly a decade. High performance clothes I actually wanted to wear.
I quickly discovered that I detested the uncertainty of attempting to establish the business as a solo founder with limited resources. I spent more time and energy figuring out what to do than I spent taking action. The stress, loneliness, and anxiety were almost too much to bear. Most solo founders I know feel the same way.
We get pointed at agencies that want to sell ad spend, at fractional CMOs priced for companies four times our size, at newsletters that tell us what Glossier did. Nothing that understands our margins, our customers, and our challenges. They sell stories of success that are inaccessible without a massive bank account and unrepeatable without extreme luck. Leaving us with burnout, desperation, and too many great businesses shuttered before they had the time to shine.
So I left DTC to figure out how software companies are built. I spent five years learning how to build digital products at Iron Mountain, ServiceNow, and TakeUp. The last of those was an SMB software platform. That is when I knew the next thing I built would be for the founders I came from.
Stryder is the process of applying what I learned in enterprise software to give solo founders the ability to build their businesses with confident clarity.
The brief you get is the brief I read.
I use Stryder to run Stryder. Every strategic decision I make about this product runs through the brief I receive each morning. What to ship next. How to price it. Whether to respond to a competitor move. All of it.
If the product stops being useful to me, you will see the product change. I will write the change-log post the same day. Visibility is the only proof I can offer right now, so I am going to publish it.
What Stryder is not.
Stryder is not a dashboard. You do not log in. You do not navigate charts. You do not build reports.
Stryder is not a consultant. It does not schedule calls, deliver decks, or bill by the hour.
Stryder is not an AI chatbot that gives generic advice. Every recommendation is grounded in your data, your strategy, and your competitive landscape. Not templates. Not frameworks. Your numbers, your context, your business.
Stryder is a text message. Every morning. A data card, four texts, and a question. Reply to go deeper. That is it.
Your first brief arrives tomorrow.
$0 for 7 days. Card on file. The brief you get is the one I read every morning.
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