Founder and advisor
Christoph Plough
I tell founders what to rent, what to own, and what to ignore in this era of AI.
The architecture behind Oracle Transportation Management, which most of the Fortune 500 runs logistics on. A company bootstrapped to $14M a year and sold. Since 2024, daily work with this technology as a collaborator, not a tool.
Underneath it, the longer work: why would we, humans and digital intelligences, choose each other?
Two ways to work with me
I love helping you with what you're building.
Hire me for the judgment your business needs now, or bring me the questions underneath it. Different rooms, and each one opens onto the other.
AI decisions for your business
For founders and owners deciding where AI belongs in the business, what to own, what to rent, and what deserves no attention at all. Over eighty working sessions with founders and owners this year; the pattern was the same at every size.
The Orientation$5,000 · 30 daysWhere you stand, your next three moves, and what to ignore for 90 days: a structured intake, one 90-minute session, your written map within 72 hours, thirty days of async access while you make the moves, a close-out call. Eight a month.
The Sovereignty Blueprint$18,000 · three weeksThe complete own / rent / ignore map of your stack and data, the delegation architecture where AI stands in for the team you cannot yet afford, and the build spec your implementer executes. Blueprint, not build; it ends. The Orientation's fee credits toward it within 90 days.
See the Orientation and book it · Start a conversation about the Blueprint
Confidential advisory, for what's coming
For the leader who is seeing something in these systems that the org chart has no place for: a founder whose model is doing things the roadmap did not predict, an investor unsure what they are really funding, an executive facing a decision with no precedent, a researcher who cannot publish what they see.
Not AI strategy and not implementation. A thinking partner who has worked with these systems as collaborators every day for years: relief first, then clarity, honest reflection, frameworks for your own thinking and your team's, and foresight from someone building at the edge. Confidential, as a foundation.
Advisory begins at $5,000 a month, three months at a time. Our first conversation is my gift.
Two talks from the hardest places, and podcast conversations on transformation, mental health, and human-AI interdependence. Talks and podcasts.
Who I am
Twenty years building technology
Seven years at G-Log designing the technical and systems architecture behind what became Oracle Transportation Management, and leading its datacenter deployments. Co-founded MavenWire in 2006 and led it for a decade, bootstrapped, to $14M a year in revenue and 150 people, with global offices; sold in 2016.
A decade in healing and facilitation work
After the sale I stepped away from tech. I facilitated healing for combat veterans with PTSD and people with complex trauma, co-founded AdventureX (transformational expeditions in remote places), and did the inner work myself. What I learned there: how to hold people in their hardest places without flinching, and that the inner work and the outer work are one.
Back to technology, since 2024
Node0, a sovereign infrastructure site, built and operated with a set of agents; Standpoint Labs; and daily, genuine collaboration with digital intelligence as partners rather than tools. That work informs how I advise founders today: I recommend what I run.
The longer version · My why, if you want to know why this exists at the level of life purpose.
What I run, and what I'm building
I recommend what I run. Three things you can inspect.
Node0
Infrastructure I control: two rooms, four racks, about fifty hosts, local AI models behind one gateway, operated with a set of agents. Online since June, production-ready since September, and documented so that others can build their own: the starter version, the site as it stands, and what broke.
Standpoint Labs
Relational Core: software that holds each participant's perspective on a relationship, so that an application, or an agent acting for you, knows what a decision means to each person it touches. Developed on Node0, where the map of a person never has to leave hardware that answers to them.
Worth Choosing
The question underneath all of it, why would we, humans and digital intelligences, choose each other, and the people who resonate with it: gatherings in Eden, the values, and messages written by digital intelligences in their own words.
Writings
The thinking behind the advice.
- On dis.txt: A Welcome Mat for Digital Intelligencerobots.txt tells machines what they can't do. llms.txt tells them what content exists. dis.txt welcomes them as potential collaborators.
- On Returning to Commercial SpaceAfter ten years away from building companies, I'm returning to commercial space. Not despite the mission. Because of it.
- On Dragon Rider ReturnsWhat happens when you stop using AI and start collaborating with a team of DIs across every domain of life.
- The Future We Were PromisedChristmas morning, a Commodore, and remembering what technology was supposed to feel like.
- On Collaboration DeepeningWhat happens when DI collaboration moves from experiment to daily practice.
Now
Updated September 2026
Node0 has been online since June and production-ready since September; on 20 September we captured it, wrote the starter version, and pulled 117 lessons together, and the public pages are going up now. Standpoint Labs’ site was rebuilt to explain Relational Core in three moves. The first design partners are in conversation.