Product
We help build concrete AI-enabled tools, automations, workflows, prototypes, and internal systems. The work is real enough to teach from and useful enough to keep.
Kindling
We help teams see the future by building it with them.
Kindling is an Applied AI Lab and AI change-management firm for companies that need to move faster than their org chart, vendor stack, or internal bandwidth allows.
What we believe
AI adoption is behavior change hiding inside a technology shift.
The tools are moving at breakneck speed. New models, agent frameworks, coding workflows, plugins, automation tools, and applied patterns appear constantly. Most teams cannot afford to spend hours a day sorting signal from noise. We can, because that is the lab part of Kindling.
The Applied AI Lab
We test the future before we ask your team to adopt it.
Every week, we are trying new model capabilities, Claude and Codex skills, OpenAI workflows, internal agents, team-specific playbooks, automation patterns, and operating rituals. Most of what we test does not survive contact with real work. That is the point.
Tools
A tool your team can run on real work, not a demo that only works in a workshop.
Workflows
A workflow your team can repeat inside the systems, meetings, and roles it already has.
Playbooks
A playbook your managers can coach, inspect, and improve as the work changes.
Rituals
A ritual your company can measure until the new behavior becomes the default.
How we work
We build product, process, and culture together.
Process
We adapt the toolkit to your systems, data, roles, meetings, and operating cadence. We do not force a generic AI playbook onto a specific company.
Culture
We bring your team along while we build. Champions learn by watching, pairing, testing, and using the tools on actual work.
About the team
Dan McCool
Founder, Kindling
Dan McCool has more than 15 years of experience creating software teams and multi-platform products across consumer and B2B businesses. He co-founded Trustworthy and served as Chief Product Officer, helping build the Family Operating System across web, iOS, Android, browser extension, and email. Before that, he led product work at Microsoft and MileIQ, and held product roles at Opower and Recurve.
- Co-founder and former Chief Product Officer at Trustworthy
- Product leader at Microsoft and MileIQ
- Experience across product, design, engineering, growth, and operations
Operating philosophy
We help teams move quickly without outsourcing judgment.
We listen, hypothesize, prototype, test, learn, and repeat. AI makes it faster to create things. It does not make it easier to know what is worth creating, who needs to change, or what will survive in the mess of a real company.
Move from AI interest to AI behavior.
We will show you what is possible, build the first version with you, and leave your team with the tools, workflows, and rituals to keep going.
Get in touch