About

The short version

I'm David Hicks. Thirty years of building things — machine vision, motion control, IoT, cloud platforms, machine learning, and now AI. Sold one company to Cognex for $115M. Lost some. Built more. These days I run an AI consulting practice for small and mid-sized businesses, and build my own AI-run operation in the open.

Based in Atlanta.

The longer version

I started in 1992 at DVT Corporation, a machine vision startup nobody had heard of. I was the Director of Business Development. We spent thirteen years finding our wedge customer, building the distribution channel, and learning what most consultants get wrong about industrial buyers. In May 2005, Cognex acquired DVT for $115 million.

I learned three things in those thirteen years that have shaped everything since:

  1. Most "tech" problems are people-and-incentives problems wearing a tech disguise.
  2. You find the wedge customer before the market knows it wants you.
  3. The boring integration work is what makes systems live or die.

Since DVT, I've built or led engineering at six more companies. DataComplex — a cloud event-processing platform in 2005, before "cloud" was a buyer category. TrackPlus, mobile-web apps for conferences and non-profits. DHC, machine learning and computer vision consulting through the late 2010s. And a commercial-greenhouse technology company, where I was VP of Engineering and led the build of a hardware-software-cloud control system; we won the 2021 Medal of Excellence — Technology of the Year.

From August 2023 to 2026, I was CTO of Saivvi. AI was the next wave. I'd been working in machine learning and computer vision for years, so the technology wasn't new to me. What was new was the wedge audience: not engineers, but the operators who use software and don't build it. The marketing manager. The ops lead. The SMB founder. The product was good; the economics of reaching its customers weren't — the Saivvi chapter tells that story straight, including the three lessons I charge for now.

What hasn't changed

The technology has changed every decade. The job hasn't.

Find the customer who needs this. Listen to them. Build the smallest thing that works. Ship it. Listen again. Repeat.

Everything else is decoration.

What I do when I'm not working

I write. I read. I spend time with family. I think about what the right next thing is more than is probably healthy.


If you want to work together: /work

If you want to follow the build: /now

If you want the long-form: /library