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20+ YEARS IN TECH BUSINESSHOSTING90 EXIT (2020)VLLM-MLX CORE CONTRIBUTOREX-CTO
TECH & BUSINESS IN ONE

I bridge technical depth with business margins.

Developers often build things that are technically interesting but burn cash. Business wants results but doesn't understand code. As a successful ex-founder and active AI architect, I act as the translator between your P&L and your engineering team. I ensure your software is secure, reliable, and economically efficient.

No obligations. I will tell you frankly whether your project makes business and technical sense.

Portrait photo of Jan Hilgard
THE PROBLEM

Why do IT and AI projects in companies so often hit unnecessary roadblocks?

  • A money black hole: Development drags on and balloons in cost. Yet with today's AI and the right architecture, reliable solutions can be built in a fraction of the time and budget.
  • Hostage to your own vendor: The moment an external firm hands the software over, you become their hostage. Every small change costs time and money because no one else in your company understands the code.
  • Inaccessible data for AI and RAG: You want to feed your AI models or agents fresh data from the web, but your dev team keeps getting blocked by Cloudflare, DataDome, or Akamai.
  • Speed vs. reliability in AI: Building a demo takes a weekend. But getting agentic flows, data security, and AI infrastructure to a truly reliable production state takes deep low-level experience.
WHO I WORK WITH

Two ways to get your tech under control.

Whether you already have a tech leader, or you're still looking for one.

For founders and CEOs

No in-house CTO?

Fractional CTO

I act as your Fractional CTO. I'll help you scope the work properly, keep the budget in check, and oversee both in-house and external developers so you don't invest in an overpriced "black hole." I speak the language of your business.

For CTOs and tech leads

Already have a dev team and CTO?

Specialised AI architect and sparring partner

I act as your specialised AI architect and sparring partner. I'm not here to replace you — I want to free up your hands from demanding R&D. I'll help you optimise your ML infrastructure (vllm-mlx, local LLMs), bypass anti-bot protections during scraping, and scale the whole system reliably and fast.

WHY ME

I understand your business and your code. That's why we build things that work in real operations.

I founded Hosting90 in 2002. For eighteen years I built it from a garage through a 25-person team to a successful international exit to WY Group in 2020. I know cash flow, margins, running a company, and how hard it is to earn every koruna. I look at technology not as a programmer but as an entrepreneur.

At the same time I go to the absolute depths of the technology. I'm a core contributor to the open-source project vllm-mlx (AI inference on Apple Silicon), where I have over 80 merged PRs. As ex-CTO I designed and led the technical architecture and AI stack of three production AI products (Advanty, Margly, Discury).

These products show how technical decisions follow the economics: the batch-friendly work in Advanty ran entirely on owned infrastructure (Apple Silicon / vllm-mlx) at a fraction of the cost, Margly on the cloud for orchestration reliability, and Discury combined both. When needed, I work down to the bottom of the network stack — I build my own residential LTE proxy pools with CGNAT rotation that reliably bypass Cloudflare/DataDome for data scraping.

I don't sell you slide decks or overpriced dev hours. I offer you my experience as your technical partner and mentor. I'll help you choose the right path, watch the architecture, and teach your team to develop the system — so you become fully independent technologically.

The full story → About
REFERENCES

In-house development under my technical guidance.

Karel Hodek

2H Service (Vapestyle)

  • 100M+ CZK revenue
  • 10+ e-shops and stores
  • ERP quote ~2M CZK

A company with 100M+ CZK revenue, 10+ e-shops and brick-and-mortar stores. Under my mentoring the team developed their own internal ERP entirely themselves — and runs, operates, and develops it without us.

We had an external quote on the table for a new ERP at around CZK 2 million. Under Jan's mentoring we built our own internal ERP completely on our own. Today we run, operate, and continue to develop it ourselves — for a fraction of the originally offered price.

Pavel Šandera

My Aura

  • 20 years in the market
  • 2465+ customers
  • Web quote ~150,000 CZK
  • Turn-key ERP estimate 10M+ CZK

A distributor of cleaning automation and robots with 20 years in the market and 2465+ customers. Under my mentoring the team developed both the website and an internal operations ERP themselves — better adapted to their real business needs. The estimated cost of delivering an equivalent turn-key ERP exceeds CZK 10 million.

We had a quote of around CZK 150,000 for an external website. Jan guided us through the whole process and under his mentoring we built both the site and the internal operations ERP ourselves. The resulting system is much better adapted to our real business needs and we can extend it flexibly on our own.
01—WHAT I BUILD

What I'm building now

B2B · PRODUCTION

Autonomous Data Feeds

Managed B2B data feeds with zero silent errors and zero client-side maintenance.

The pipeline combines fast local deterministic parsers, real-time cognitive AI validation, and a custom physical LTE proxy pool in the Czech Republic. It automatically self-repairs (heals) on layout changes and guarantees continuous output validity (SLA).

No dashboards, just clean structured data delivered directly to S3, SFTP, Webhooks, or REST API.

Live Demo & Tech Specs ↗
SOLO · R&D

Surfaced

AI Search Visibility scanner + GEO content methodology.

Measures where a brand is missing from Google's AI Overview and generates content to fill the gap.

Stack: early R&D, not finalized.

Solo · R&D phase.

→ More info: jan.hilgard@gmail.com

CTO of production AI products (Advanty, Margly, Discury)

Three production AI products where I built and led the technical architecture and AI stack. Past role — not products of mine today.

Advanty

AI-powered competitive intelligence for marketing agencies.

Agents auto-tag ads, extract hooks, classify CTAs, and tag creatives — all as reliable structured outputs.

Stack: Qwen 3.6 on vllm-mlx (Apple Silicon M3 Ultra). A batch-friendly workload with reliable structured outputs — owned inference made sense economically and operationally.

Led the AI stack and agentic flow of the project as CTO of production AI products.

Margly

Shoptet e-commerce analytics for online merchants.

AI agents identify margin leaks, recommend pricing changes, auto-tag transactions, and run multi-step orchestration over orders, shipping, ad costs, and returns.

Stack: Google AI (Gemini). Chosen deliberately — Margly needed low-latency responses for multi-step tool calling and autonomous orchestration. Running inference onsite wouldn't have been economically viable at this task class.

Led the AI stack and agentic flow of the project as CTO of production AI products.

Discury

Customer intelligence — mines Reddit, Hacker News, and Product Hunt for pain points, trends, and market gaps.

Discovery and classification agents surface signals at high volume; summarization agents distill the nuance worth acting on.

Stack: hybrid orchestration. Discovery and classification agents on Qwen 3.6 / vllm-mlx (high-volume, batch-tolerant); final summarization and nuance-heavy reasoning on Google AI where the per-token premium was justified by output quality. Routing decided per agent task.

Led the AI stack and agentic flow of the project as CTO of production AI products.

07—PAST PROJECTS

What I co-founded and keep developing

CO-FOUNDED · ACTIVELY DEVELOPED

Lobot.chat

AI chatbot for automating customer support in e-commerce. Resolves up to 98% of inquiries without a human, recommends products, and actively helps close sales. I designed and fully led the technical architecture, including integrations into Shopify, WooCommerce, Magento, PrestaShop, and OpenCart. As co-founder I continue to actively contribute to its technical development and operations.

→ lobot.chat
CO-FOUNDED · ONGOING CONSULTING

GuruWatch

Comprehensive B2B monitoring dashboard for manufacturers and distributors. GuruWatch tracks partner stock levels and pricing across e-shops in real time, watches price trends, and sends immediate alerts. Clients include brands like Lenovo, Niceboy, and Infinix. I designed and fully built the entire data and scraping pipeline that runs reliably at scale. Day-to-day operations have been handed over to a new owner, but I continue to provide strategic technical support and consulting for GuruWatch.

→ www.guruwatch.cz
06—TIMELINE

The journey from the start

  1. TODAY

    Current focus

    vllm-mlx core contributor. Building Surfaced (R&D). Open to Fractional CTO and technical advisory engagements.

  2. EARLY 2025

    Launch of Advanty, Margly & Discury + vllm-mlx

    Official deployment and launch of three end-to-end AI products as CTO and AI architect: Margly (profitability analytics for online merchants), Discury (customer intelligence platform), and Advanty (AI competitive intelligence). The architectures combine local inference with frontier cloud APIs. In parallel, active role as core contributor to the open-source framework vllm-mlx (LLM inference on Apple Silicon, over 80 merged PRs, author of the compatible Messages API layer for tools like Claude Code).

  3. 2024

    R&D and AI stack development

    Intensive development, testing of local models, and design of hybrid infrastructure for the upcoming AI products. Work on reliability of agentic flow orchestration and on token cost optimisation (inference economics).

  4. 2023

    Development and co-founding of Lobot.chat

    Development of an advanced e-commerce chatbot with integrations into platforms like Shopify, WooCommerce, and Magento. As co-founder I continue to actively contribute technically.

  5. 2022

    Full shift to the AI/ML stack

    Deep dive into local LLM models, agentic workflows, and inference optimisation. Bridging the gap between academic research and infrastructure a solo founder can actually run in production.

  6. 2021

    Co-founding of GuruWatch

    Development and launch of a robust scraping and data pipeline for tracking pricing trends across hundreds of e-shops (brands like Lenovo, Infinix, Niceboy). I still act as the project's technical consultant.

  7. SEPTEMBER 2020

    Successful Hosting90 exit

    Full sale of Hosting90 systems s.r.o. to the international WY Group (operator of the Ignum brand). The transaction was publicly announced.

    → hostingy.net
  8. 2002

    Founding of Hosting90

    Founding of a hosting and infrastructure company and 18 years of building it from scratch — from a garage to a 25-person team running its own servers.

WAYS TO WORK TOGETHER

How we can collaborate on your project

One-off Blueprint

AI & Tech Architecture

A clear plan and savings before you spend on development.

I analyse your idea or existing IT system. I design the optimal architecture, choose the best AI models and technologies, and produce a precise technical plan. With this blueprint you save hundreds of thousands on dead-end development.

Scope and budget depend on the complexity of the brief. We'll price the engagement individually after the initial consultation.

most common choice

Monthly engagement

Fractional CTO & AI Sparring Partner

Your technical safety net and strategic partner.

Long-term oversight of your project. For companies without a CTO I act as Fractional CTO and steer the direction of development. For companies with a CTO I'm a specialised partner for architecture, data scraping, and team development.

Monthly retainer based on scope and intensity of involvement. We define the details after the intro call.

Intensive consulting day

Dedicated Advisory Day

Rapid unblocking of a technology bottleneck.

One full day dedicated only to you and your team. Together we solve a specific bottleneck: design the logic of a new system, secure your data for AI deployment, fix scraping blockers, or train your people on how to build effectively with AI.

Fixed daily rate. Reach out and we'll agree on a date.

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

Who are your services for?
For mid-sized companies, startups, and business owners who want to build their own software or deploy AI without getting burned by expensive agencies. I work either directly with founders, or as expert support for their in-house CTOs and dev teams.
Will you actually write the software for us?
My role is architectural and mentorship-driven. I'll design your system, look after its security, and teach your people (or your developer) how to build and operate it effectively with modern AI tools. If you don't have in-house developers, I'll help you choose and oversee reliable external vendors.
Won't you replace our existing CTO?
Absolutely not. If you have a CTO or Tech Lead, I act as their ally and external expert (a sparring partner). I help them with the technologies they have no time for in day-to-day operations — typically AI research, bypassing anti-bot systems during scraping, optimising server costs, or designing complex integrations. My goal is to free up their hands and move their team forward.

Book a free project consultation.

Write to me — no strings attached. I'll tell you straight whether your project makes business and technical sense, and we'll agree on the next step together.

Consult my project for free