Let’s begin by noting that 0Pro aims to solve a larger problem than what Jira, Notion, or Linear were built to address.

At 0Flips, the mission is to build — and help build — many projects and businesses. As those projects mature into businesses and those businesses begin to scale, being exceptionally efficient at managing people and projects becomes critical to that mission.

As we consider how humans and AI agents will work together in hybrid systems, it’s important to rethink how work has traditionally been done in order to build a foundation that supports a new way to work.

0Pro introduces several principles that influence all levels of work — from organization, planning, and prioritization to accountability, hiring, and performance management.

This post highlights the two most foundational principles that set the stage for the rest, which I’ll cover in the next post.

Principle #1: Org Functions (vs Org Charts)

Most companies have inherited the idea of departments from legacy organizational design, structured around hierarchy and headcount management.

In my experience, this often leads to work being created to serve individuals or departments rather than the company as a whole.

Org Functions remove the human element and focus purely on the capabilities and work required to run and grow a company. The mental shift is subtle but powerful — from thinking about who has to do the work to what work needs to be done.

When functions and work become the foundation, decision-making and accountability gain clarity and simplicity.

Departments can still exist to align people, but they should be viewed as temporary executors or custodians of the company’s functions — roles that can pass between people or departments over time.

Example:
A lean Marketing Department that owns the company’s marketing, brand management, design, and data insights “functions” becomes overwhelmed and decides to spin off a new department to own the brand management function.

Because all work and knowledge for brand management are captured as a “function,” plugging in new owners becomes seamless and persistent across the company’s lifespan.

Principle #2: Roles > People

A decade ago, I worked with a team of scientists on implementing a Treasury Board of Canada mandate on Information Management (IM) across the Army.

It was there that I gained a newfound respect for the impact of great IM policies in a world that values data quantity over quality. Our mandate was simple but transformative — decouple work and responsibility from people.

You may be wondering, “Why does this matter?” That’s where I was back then.

I was tasked with interviewing all levels of the Army — military, civilians, generals, chiefs of staff, operations, training, and more — asking questions like:

• What are you responsible for?

• What processes do you own?

• What work do you help with?

• What work do you own that you shouldn’t?

The results were eye-opening. Even in an organization as structured as the Army, inefficiency was rampant.

A few lessons learned

• In a world that should have clear accountability, everyone thought they owned everything — until things went wrong.

• Despite defined ranks and roles, work was often tied to people and their egos. When people deployed, were promoted, or transferred, the work often stopped or was lost.

• There was strong resistance to the idea that a person was simply a contributor to a role rather than the owner of it. But when they “got it,” it was transformative.

• Many individuals were performing multiple roles, making performance management difficult and inconsistent — a reality in most organizations.

In the end, the Army transitioned to role-based work through technology, education, and policy.

Later, when automating HQ decision-making processes, that structure made the work much simpler. Dozens of people had moved through those roles since then, yet accountability and processes persisted — the system worked.

0Pro in Practice

To understand how this applies to 0Pro and the projects it supports, recall the importance of Org Functions — that work drives everything.

In 0Pro, capabilities, objectives, and tasks are owned by Roles, while people are assigned to those Roles. The work and knowledge stay with the role, even as people come and go.

Example:
As the founding technical person at Tribe, I’m responsible for multiple roles — CTO, Head of Product, Engineering, Data, Security, and IM.

During compliance reviews, I also act as CISO and DPO, adding even more hats.

With 0Pro, I’ve created and assigned myself to each of these roles. As I catalog the work I own, I associate it with roles rather than myself.

Over time, as workload increases and I start dropping balls, I can make informed, data-driven hiring decisions — perhaps bringing in an intermediate Product Manager, consultant, or intern to offset specific work — rather than instinctively hiring a Head of Product who may add overhead instead of efficiency.

General Rules & Considerations

• Role before Person:
  Hiring “the amazing person” should unlock defined work and outcomes. If not, you’re gambling on emotion. If you find a great person, define the work and outcomes first — or wait until the role exists.

• Roles first, then hires:
  Roles should be held by existing people until capacity becomes an issue. For example, hire a new Sales Manager only once the first reaches capacity — creating a second Sales Manager role rather than replacing the person.

Next

In the next post, I’ll cover the three layers of work — Capabilities, Objectives, and Tasks — and the importance of creating space for both the business and product teams, while pulling both into the same unified work solution.

Beyond that, we’ll dive into planning and prioritization principles, followed by a deeper look at performance management, hiring, and the human + AI hybrid foundation that 0Pro is designed to enable.

👀 I have my brand agent format my articles for clarity and grammar. I usually go behind an remove the “—” pauses that AI love so much. I am no longer fighting it 😛

I’ve used and have been charged with rolling out Jira, Shortcut, Monday.com, Asana, Trello, Basecamp, Notion, Slack, spreadsheets, Airtable, and more. The common theme every time is maintaining company-wide buyin over a sustained period of time.

While I’ve long held a low regard for these tools, my breaking point came when reviewing the new kid on the block, Linear, the new “hype” tool everyone is using. How this new tool broke me was, admittedly, a nuanced detail: their decision to call all work units “issues.” I did some digging to see if I could change this in the configuration settings… rename it to “tasks,” “items,” “work,” anything other than “issues.” No bueno.

So what’s my issue with “issues”? For me, it’s the psychological and cultural impact. Deep down, I don’t want my teams thinking of their work as “issues”, or as problems to be fixed. We should be building, innovating, and delivering value, not “fixing issues.” Imagine developers working all day on issues, and business teams checking in on the status of those issues. Over time, that kind of language surely causes… well, issues. Overly sensitive, perhaps.

That afternoon, after more than a decade of complaining about these tools, I decided I was finally going to do something about it.

How? By creating yet another to-do tool. Genius idea. 💡

History, Context, and Why Me

Over the past decade working with startups, I have generally been the lone technical senior leader/founder, and often was delegated company processes in secondary operations or chief of staff roles.

Some lessons learned (generalized):

• Non-technical founders often have anxiety about what product/dev is doing,

• Business teams have no interest (time) to dig around product tools,

• Developers don’t need to be involved in strategy, but want the opportunity to be,

• There is a high likelihood quarterly OKR’s will be blown up one week into the quarter,

• Departments often feel mis-represented during product prioritization exercises,

• Everyone wants more data, then rarely use it, and

• It is rarely the tools fault, but the tools don’t exactly help either.

Fun facts: The average founder age for Jira, Asana, and Notion was 24 years old. Almost all startup tools were founded by software engineers ~ 🤔

For non-technical founders, product owners, and business staff this should be enlightening as to why the tools always feel so foreign, they were never designed for you.

What those 24-year-old software-engineer founders did not have, was over a decade in government project management, two decades of needing to get things done under pressure (military), and another decade in startups bridging the gap between tech and business. Add to that, years spent working alongside some very bright scientists to develop and roll out role-based Information Management (IM) systems across the entire Army, more on this in a follow up post.

<ENTER> Project: 0Pro

That weekend, after my fateful Linear meltdown, I worked relentlessly with my AI agents to document, and re-document, the many pain points, experiences, and half-solutions I’ve gathered over the years. Out of that process came a methodology and a set of principles that I began building into a system during evenings and weekends.

A month later, I pushed the half-built boat into the water. I’m now onboarding my active projects/teams so I can learn and iterate in real-time. The tech team has rallied around using it to manage our daily Now, Next, Later work. There is daily AI summarization to provide business with awareness, initial prioritization to start the milestone planning process, and will be releasing the business team experience and milestone planning in the next few weeks to onboard the non-tech team ~ the real test.

While the Alpha (0Pro.ai) is technically live, the onboarding education layer is still required to right-size the experience and introduce concepts ahead of looking for friendlies to start testing. In the meantime, you can get a snapshot of 0Pro’s principles on the landing page. Stay tuned for Part 2, where I’ll dive deeper into the principles themselves and explore how 0Pro could serve as a foundation for agentic collaboration within organizations — and, in a likely third post, how this could evolve into a fairer, more efficient approach to performance management and hiring processes.

Closing Note

No disrespect to the young, software-engineer founders! I actually believe that with AI it is them who should be even more empowered to automate and simplify “business” so they can build more 😁

As I highlighted in my previous post, I recently co-founded Tribe in June. Together with three other co-founders, we’ve been learning and building at warp speed in a space that doesn’t usually allow for much “speed.” I recommend following Gary’s Substack for a deeper understanding of the why and purpose, as this update may not do it full justice.

Conflict of Interest

When Ethereum first launched, I was 100% bought in and went full blockchain for a few years, absolutely nerding out (annoyingly so) on how powerful the technology could be in solving real-world problems. Fast-forward a few years, and my optimism had nearly evaporated as governments and banks regulated out most of the good actors, leaving behind a generation of degens, memecoins, and opportunistic cons.

So when Gary started pitching the idea of Tribe as a tokenized solution for real estate, my enthusiasm wasn’t what it would have been years ago. However, after months of building, it’s clear the Dubai and UAE regulators genuinely want to innovate and lead change themselves. They’re learning, compromising, and moving fast, while establishing a precedent for others around the world to follow.

Problems Worth Solving

The tokenization of real estate helps address three near-term, global challenges (among others):

1. Housing affordability: The price of home ownership is becoming unattainable globally, especially for first-time buyers. Tribe lowers the barrier by enabling a practical rent-to-own model.

2. Democratized access: Traditionally, high-value real estate has been limited to those with expertise and large capital. Tribe simplifies access for retail investors.

3. Liquidity: Through a Tribe marketplace, property holders can buy and sell their shares when they want.

In the short period of time we have been building and learning, it is very clear that it is not only the UAE and Dubai who are aware of the problem and opportunities. In just a few short months, we have been invited to several accelerator programs in different regions, and are sourcing new opportunities weekly 🐿️.

Auxiliary Opportunities

While Tribe is focused on supporting the UAE’s vision to digitize its economy (including real estate), we’re also working with other regions to explore and validate similar initiatives.

Beyond accessibility to home ownership and high-value real estate, Tribe will soon have the foundation to explore innovations such as:

• Allowing landlords to liquidate a portion of property to free up capital.

• Re-imagining the outdated timeshare model by bridging ownership and usage.

• Facilitating fix-and-flip opportunities for quicker ROI.

• Tokenizing real estate funds.

• Brokerage tokenization enablement.

Unknown Chaos

We incorporated in June and are closing in on the end of our pre-seed round. The team is moving fast and smart, investing heavily in navigating regulations, building a standout product, and constantly challenging each other to stay focused despite new contacts and opportunities emerging daily.

A few weeks ago, Tribe submitted its VARA Stage 2 application (a big milestone). Until approval, we’re not permitted to promote anything investment-related and must keep marketing efforts muffled, a challenge in itself.

Initial Core Offering Pitch (pending VARA approval)

• The Alpha “education-only” app has just been released. We’ll be actively iterating on it while building in the background ahead of a full launch.

• International Real Estate investment (outside the UAE) is a regulator priority and potentially coming soon.

• One block (fraction) of a property ≈ $750 CAD.

• Earn rental income (yield) relative to the property share you own.
  Expected exit window: ~3 years (voted on by property owners/investors).

• Buy and sell blocks anytime on Tribe’s secondary market.

• Receive a digital deed from the Dubai Land Department representing the ownership of the fraction of property.

• Tribe will go live with its first properties in 2025.

Investment

We’re close to closing the pre-seed round, with plans to begin a seed round after tokenizing our first properties. If you’re interested in learning more, please reach out.

As for a Personal Snapshot

Having worked with UAE projects for the past four years, the allure of moving is very real, fueled weekly by the pressure from the team and reinforced on every Zoom call with vendors, advisors, investors, or clients. The business opportunities for 0Flips in the UAE are significant compared to Halifax: the weather, tax environment, and sheer energy to innovate and move fast are unmatched right now.

On the other hand, my daughter has just started school in the US, my wife is thriving in her career, and I still have a strong desire to innovate, drive change, and win at “home.” For now, the plan is to spend more time in the UAE with the team, deepen my understanding of the landscape, and begin laying roots with Tribe, 0Flips, and personally so that any future move, or hybrid solution, will be a smoother transition.

Conclusion

This post only scratches the surface of the opportunities and work already underway. Hopefully, it provides enough context for future updates.

The more time I spend back in the blockchain space, the more I’m reminded there are still many people and companies working behind the scenes to innovate and utilize the technology to create positive impact.

Today’s goal is to give a quick snapshot of the projects that 0Flips is currently running, supporting, or incubating. In future posts, I’ll dig deeper into each one.

Active Projects

LVL Wellbeing – I spent nearly four years helping build this UAE wellbeing company and one of the strongest tech teams I’ve had the pleasure to work with. After downsizing earlier this year, the technology team transitioned under 0Flips, where we continue development and support.

Tribe – I co-founded this UAE-based company as CTO at the same time 0Flips began operations. Tribe is working with Dubai regulators to tokenize real estate. After incorporating in June, Tribe has already passed its first stage of VARA licensing and submitted the second stage a few weeks ago. This project has the potential to set technical and operational precedents in making real estate accessible to those squeezed out of the market, with a model that could expand globally. Beyond my co-founder role, 0Flips also supports Tribe on product and engineering from Canada in a consultancy capacity.

Podia – Originally championed by Dubai leadership with the ambition of preparing local athletes for future Olympics, this initiative required a structured approach to grassroots sport, talent identification, and facility use. After a summer pause, 0Flips picked it up for further research. Having personally invested heavily on my kids’ sports, I realized the global potential to serve both government initiatives and grassroots development—covering athlete branding, resource access, and facility utilization. Podia is now being incubated within 0Flips.

0Pro – A personal project I started just two weeks ago to solve a long-standing frustration: managing products and businesses efficiently. The immediate frustration was once again having to choose between Jira, Shortcut, or Linear to track work, not because we needed it, but for compliance and investor due diligence, despite knowing most of the non-tech team wouldn’t use it. With a background in rolling out information management frameworks across the Army, I believe there’s a simpler way to manage scaleups than today’s startup-oriented tools designed for developers only. Success TBD.

In Queue

The Loyalty App – A multi-faceted project aiming to reshape marketing fundamentals in the way Google Ads once did. The vision is to rebalance the brand–consumer dynamic from reach to demand creation, giving consumers more say in how they engage with brands, while brands invest more in meaningful interactions. Imagine… your phone (or future AR glasses) buzzing as a digital Nike plane flies overhead, dropping a shoebox a few blocks away—first 10 to get there, score free shoes.

Project Votes – With politics strained by misinformation and eroding trust, there’s an opportunity to use technology to track representatives’ performance against promises and simplify how citizens understand their systems. Done right, this could highlight positive grassroots work and reduce the dominance of traditional “politics.”

Even More

Two ideas may fold into 0Pro:

• Semi-automated performance management using living job/role descriptions. Are you doing what you were hired to do?

• Mapping AI agent frameworks to real-world roles, stripping away jargon and over-engineering.

Other projects sit further down the queue and may surface in later posts.

Conclusion

This is a first peek into my chaos box. Many of these ideas have been years in the making, and with the formalization of 0Flips, we’ll dedicate resources to exploring, building, and validating them. If you’re passionate about solving in these spaces—or bring expertise in any relevant lane—reach out. Otherwise, expect future posts where I’ll dig deeper into individual projects.

Closing Ask 🙏

Having spent many years working with many government grant programs, I understand how time consuming this can become when trying to balance it with other commitments. Any recommendations for exceptional or rising star fractional ops managers that specialize in, or passionate to learn to, manage government grants for early startups/scaleups would be greatly appreciated.

Hunter

I have a blessed life with a loving wife and two kids (15 and 13) who have been my primary investment, and a big reason to protect my time. Professionally, my story arc starts like many others: having started from very little and with no understanding of the “real world,” leading me stumbling my way to today off the back of genuine curiosity to learn & solve problems, initiative, and a willingness to work through and accept opportunities others wouldn’t.

A quick background that started with joining the Communications Reserves 🪖 when I turned 17 (retired at 37), and attended university for the dream job as a Phys-ed teacher. It was here where I was first introduced to code development through an elective that changed my career trajectory. After my first year, I deployed on tour to the Middle East, and when I returned I switched majors to accounting where I continued working full-time shift work with the military (still not realizing that tech could be an actual job). Throughout, I was still learning to code and build during downtime, when by random chance I was provided an opportunity to leverage my technical knowledge and Top Secret clearance to start consulting on a few large government projects. There, I specialized in Research and Development (R&D), while simultaneously working side hustles traveling across Canada evaluating technologies and building RFPs on behalf of various government agencies. This eventually led to a transition where, for the past decade, I have been working in (and with) startups to build and lead technology teams and provide strategic and operational support throughout the various life cycles of a startup.

The common theme across that journey has been an ability to manage several diverse work commitments at once, and often being way over my head with most new opportunities I raised my hand for. Thank you to everyone who provided me with those opportunities, and for allowing me to test, learn, and iterate over the years. 🙏

0Flips Innovations Inc.

Flipping 0’s to 1’s in binary… “zero flips” 💡

“0Flips” is my chaos box. A company I recently started to allow me to incubate the numerous software projects I have backlogged over the years, while also allowing me to centralize my support of other companies and projects focused on R&D.

The core vision and purpose is forming small pods of passionate and curious talent, and empowering them to build and validate software-based Proofs of Concept (PoCs). When validated as viable business opportunities, they become formally incorporated with their own founding teams either through 0Flips or as independent entities. This approach allows for the sharing of technology and operational resources, enabling wins to waterfall down to the backlog of projects.

A few years ago, this approach would have been more difficult. However, today, with the abilities that AI provides, getting from idea to market validation requires far fewer resources, especially when those resources and experiences are shared. That said, the in-house problems that 0Flips will pursue will attempt to solve larger systemic challenges, like in the marketing industry or politics, while leveraging today’s efficiency gains to actually build bigger vs. faster.

Externally, 0Flips will also selectively help other businesses with their R&D through advising and consulting. This will allow 0Flips to conduct R&D on your behalf, find resources to embed into your team to help with R&D, or help to implement processes and culture that lead to more efficient R&D. As a company and a vision, we do not aspire to be a “dev shop.” We simply want to build and solve difficult problems.

Next

In follow-up posts, I will begin introducing problems that 0Flips is working to solve, as well as others that are in queue awaiting resources or further research before starting development. Lastly, to set expectations, my content may be wide-ranging and cover topics or solutions that attempt to push against the grain. While I am energized to discuss and debate problems and solutions, I much prefer those conversations over a coffee or video call, and may not respond often on online mediums.