Rudy J. Ellis

CEO • Founder • Builder

Building companies, tools, and frameworks with AI

About

CEO of Switchboard Live (founded 2016) — a SaaS platform I've scaled over the past decade. Along the way, I've learned what actually works in startup operations, product development, go-to-market strategy, and the hard lessons that separate ideas from sustainable businesses.

My mission is to leverage AI and agentic tools to compress the idea-to-execution cycle—turning 18-month problems into 18-day experiments. I'm documenting and sharing the tactical frameworks I've built, helping other founders skip the expensive mistakes I've already made.

I'm currently exploring the intersection of AI agents, automation, and product development through hands-on side projects. Each experiment teaches me what works, what breaks, and how to effectively orchestrate tools to build better tools.

10+
Years Building
1
Successful Startup
Lessons Learned

Current Focus

🤖 Agentic AI for Builders

Exploring how AI agents can augment founder productivity—automating the tedious, amplifying the strategic, keeping humans in the loop where it matters most.

Active

📚 Founder Knowledge Sharing

Documenting and sharing the playbooks, frameworks, and lessons from a decade of startup building. Turning experience into actionable guides.

Ongoing

🛠️ Building with AI

Launching side projects as controlled experiments to test how AI tooling can solve real problems faster, cheaper, and better than traditional approaches.

In Progress

Side Projects & Experiments

Each project is a learning lab for testing AI tooling, automation, and product-building approaches.

Couple Pay

Live

A credit card paydown app for couples. Track balances together, choose snowball or avalanche strategies, and celebrate milestones as a team. No bank connectivity required.

Visit Couple Pay

What I'm Into

💡 Systematic Troubleshooting

I love breaking down complex problems into component parts, identifying root causes, and building solutions that actually stick.

🏈 Philadelphia Eagles

Sports as a lens for understanding team dynamics, performance under pressure, and what separates champions from pretenders.

🔄 Pattern Recognition

Finding recurring patterns across problems, opportunities, and solutions. The best frameworks emerge from seeing what works across contexts.

Let's Talk

Whether you're a founder, fellow builder, or just interested in how AI can accelerate your work—I'd love to connect.

Get in Touch