Brian Geisel

CEO of Symage, #syntheticdata . Permanent lover of God. Wife. Software. ADD-induced lover of Astronomy, Rock Climbing, Hockey and Humor.

[Brian Geisel @bgeisel1]

What would you do?

A friend asks you to recommend them for a job at your company.

But you know they’re not a fit.
Not even close.

Now you’ve got three options:
1️⃣ Lie to your company and vouch for them.
2️⃣ Lie to your friend and say you’ll help, then quietly hope it disappears.
3️⃣ Tell your friend the truth and risk the relationship.

A friend of mine (let’s call him Steve) faced this exact choice.

Here’s what he did:
He told his friend he’d make the recommendation.
Then he handed the resume to HR and said:
“Here’s my friend’s CV. I recommend you don’t hire him.”

Cold? Maybe.
Honest? Absolutely.

And in the long run? Probably the right move.

Because people are paying attention, your team, your peers, your leadership. And your reputation is built in moments like these.

So… what would you do if you were Steve?

#Leadership #Integrity #CareerAdvice #ToughDecisions #StartupCulture #Hiring #TeamDynamics #WorkplaceTruth #ProfessionalGrowth

[Brian Geisel @bgeisel1]

It takes relentless effort, innovation, and grit to grow a company.

Giants don’t start as giants 👇
→ Steve Jobs sold his VW bus to start Apple
→ Jeff Bezos and his parents bet everything to launch Amazon
→ Larry Page and Sergey Brin built Google while still at Stanford

And I started Geisel Software in the loft of my house.

Looking back, it’s amazing to see how far we’ve come.
It’s taken years of hard work and persistence and the journey is far from over.
I’m excited for what’s ahead.

What’s your story of humble beginnings?

#Entrepreneurship #Innovation #TechStartups #AI #ArtificialIntelligence #MachineLearning #ML #GeiselSoftware

[Brian Geisel @bgeisel1]

“I sent an email” isn’t progress.
What actually happened?
📞 Did you call?
🚶♂️ Did you show up?
🚗 Did you go there yourself?

A friend of mine needed a permit.
Weeks of emails. Nothing.

His mentor?
Got in the car.
Drove to the office.
Asked in person.
Left with the permit in hand.

We say we’re stuck.
Often, we just haven’t tried a different approach.

👉 Sometimes the world isn’t against you, you just haven’t pushed hard enough.
So… what’s the thing you need to stop overthinking and start doing today?
#Execution #Leadership #Startups #ProblemSolving #Entrepreneurship #TakeAction #MindsetMatters #JustDoIt

[Brian Geisel @bgeisel1]

I’ve been testing this for weeks.

You describe your idea, Claude Opus 4 builds it.
It writes the logic.
Designs the UI.
Squashes bugs before you can even spot them.

The only thing it won’t do?
Pay your water bill.
(Although… pair it with the right AI agent and it will.)
If you’ve got big ideas but zero tech skills, here’s what you don’t have anymore:
Excuses.

Claude just made AI your co-founder.
So, what’s still holding you back?

#Claude #AI #NoCode #Startups #Innovation #Entrepreneurship #TechForEveryone #FutureOfWork #BuildInPublic #MachineLearning

[Brian Geisel @bgeisel1]

A $100M robotics contract was on the line.

And it was about to be lost… over a memory leak.
We were called in to fix front-end latency on a robot controller.
💻 Everyone suspected JavaScript or Angular was to blame.

But the real culprit?

🧠 A C++ comms layer quietly bleeding memory like a busted hydrant.
Most dev teams would’ve stopped at the UI.
We dug deeper, straight to the board.
We found the leak. Patched it.
And kept our client in the race for a $100M deal.

🚀 That’s why we don’t hire “T-shaped” developers.
We hire M-shaped developers, masters of multiple domains, with wins to match.

#SoftwareEngineering #Debugging #MemoryLeak #CPlusPlus #FrontendDev #BackendDev #FullStack #Robotics #AIInfrastructure #DeepTech #EmbeddedSystems #MShapedDevelopers #TechWins #SoftwareRescue #StartupTech

[Brian Geisel @bgeisel1]

Some days, I have to shut the door and just think.

Not respond to messages.
Not jump into tasks.
Not even check on the progress of things.

Just think.

Because as a CEO, that’s part of the job. Everyone else is moving fast—solving problems, checking boxes. And I respect that.

But someone has to step back and ask:

Are we solving the right problems?

Tactics are busy. Strategy is quiet. Tactics are checklists. Strategy is uncomfortable choices.

Most people are executing perfectly, but on the wrong thing. So no, it’s not that I’m doing nothing.

It’s that I’m carving out time to do the most important thing.

👇 How do you make space for strategic thought?

#Leadership #Strategy #StartupLife #DecisionMaking #Focus #CEOThoughts

[Brian Geisel @bgeisel1]

When I started Geisel Software, I didn’t write a business plan.

I had a customer.

A real person with a real problem we could solve.

That’s what you need to start: someone whose needs you can legitimately meet.

Solve one person’s problem well—then find more like them.

That’s when you make a plan.

That’s when you scale.

Don’t start with a doc. Start with value.

#Entrepreneurship #StartupAdvice #CustomerFirst #GeiselSoftware #BuildToSolve

[Brian Geisel @bgeisel1]

Early in my engineering career, I just wanted to finish the product.

So when leadership kept changing direction, it felt like chaos.

Now I know better.

You don’t build the whole thing and then figure out how to sell it.

You build while learning.
You talk to customers.
You pivot, tweak, adjust—until it’s something people actually want.

Shipping the wrong product faster is still failing.

#ProductDevelopment #CustomerFeedback #StartupLife #BuildSmart

[Brian Geisel @bgeisel1]

Why hardware/software alignment is your project's secret weapon 🤔

In fast-paced fields like embedded systems, IoT, and AI, the difference between project triumph and tech headaches often comes down to one thing…

Hardware/software alignment— before you start the build. Here’s why this foundational step matters for your teams and your bottom line:

1️⃣ Prevents Costly Rework
A mismatch today means budget overruns and timeline delays tomorrow. Example? Selecting a microcontroller before confirming your software needs could land your team in a costly hardware swap cycle late in the game.

2️⃣ Optimizes Performance
When software demands and hardware capabilities are in sync, you get predictable performance—vital for everything from medical devices to autonomous vehicles.

3️⃣ Simplifies Debugging & Testing
Clean interfaces and test plans save endless hours lost to mysterious bugs lurking in misaligned systems.

4️⃣ Future-Proofs Your Solution
Planning headroom in hardware today ensures you can scale and adapt as your application evolves (think seamless ML model upgrades at the edge).

5️⃣ Boosts Team Collaboration
A shared blueprint breaks down silos, aligns expectations, and minimizes those costly last-minute surprises.

In short? Early alignment isn’t just a technical detail—it’s essential for efficiency, reliability, and true innovation. How are you ensuring your hardware and software teams start on the same page?

#Innovation #EmbeddedSystems #IoT #AIDevelopment #TechLeadership #GeiselSoftware #ProductDesign

[Brian Geisel @bgeisel1]

I’ve seen too many bugs caused by one thing: magic numbers.

x = y + 534
What is 534? Who knows. Now someone changes it to 543 in one place… and chaos ensues.

When you name your constants (averageDoorWidth = 534), your code becomes readable. Maintainable. Debuggable.

Magic numbers aren’t clever, they’re landmines.

Write code like someone else is going to read it.

Because they will.

#CleanCode #SoftwareEngineering #BestPractices #CodeQuality

[Brian Geisel @bgeisel1]

Everyone’s racing to build the biggest model.

But when you’re solving a focused problem, bigger isn’t better—it’s just slowing you down.

Small language models trained on high-quality, domain-specific data can outperform the giants. They’re faster to deploy, easier to audit, and often more accurate for the task at hand.

You don’t need a trillion parameters.

You need the right data.

Let’s stop treating “big” as synonymous with “smart.”

#AI #LLM #SmallLanguageModels #MachineLearning #DataQuality

[Brian Geisel @bgeisel1]

I’m so excited to share that I will be a speaker at this year’s RoboBusiness Conference & Expo.

Join me in Santa Clara on October 15 - 16 as I discuss how to fast-track robotic and automation with smarter AI training data.

You can register for the event here: https://t.co/9pvvjYOGP7 

#RoboBusiness  #EarlyBird

[Brian Geisel @bgeisel1]

Traditional code? Runs on logic.

Machine learning? Runs on vibes ⚡️

Old school programming is if-this-then-that.

Clean. Predictable. Like a flowchart.

Machine learning?
It’s: “this probably means that… so maybe do this other thing.”
Messy. Probabilistic.
But that’s where the magic happens ✨

Traditional code lives in black and white.

Machine learning lives in the gray.

And the future?
It’s built in the gray.

Follow for more!

#MachineLearning #AI #EngineeringCulture #DeepTech #FutureOfTech #ProbabilitiesNotRules #ThinkDifferent

[Brian Geisel @bgeisel1]

Stop encrypting passwords 🔒❌

Because if you can decrypt it… so can someone else.

You don’t want that.

What you need is a one-way hash—math you can only run *one way*.

You can’t reverse it.
You can only verify if the math checks out.

🔐 For passwords: Hash it. Salt it. Store it. Never encrypt it.

#CyberSecurity #PasswordSecurity #Hashing #Encryption #Infosec #DataSecurity #EngineeringTips

[Brian Geisel @bgeisel1]

Don’t hire T-shaped devs.
One area of depth? Cute. Not enough.

We got called in for front-end JavaScript on a robot controller 🤖
But the real problem?

💻 Not the UI.
🧠 It was a C++ memory leak—buried deep in the comms layer.

Most teams would’ve stopped at the UI.
Ours debugged C++ and fixed the leak.
No panic. Just precision.

That’s what kept our client in the race for a $100M contract 💰

We hire M-shaped developers—multiple domains, multiple depths.
Because shallow devs? They sink big deals.

#Robotics #SoftwareEngineering #MShapedDevelopers #CPlusPlus #FrontendDev #DeepTech #FullStack #StartupTech #MemoryLeaks

[Brian Geisel @bgeisel1]

Most people think synthetic data is just AI making stuff up 🤖
It’s not.

We don’t generate data.
We engineer reality.

📸 We build scenes with real physics, lighting, materials—down to the tiniest variable.

🧩 Every object, every condition, meticulously designed to reflect the real world.

Some of our clients thought the datasets we sent were real.
Their models couldn’t tell the difference either.

That’s not AI magic.
That’s precision.

#SyntheticData #MachineLearning #AIInfrastructure #DeepTech #GenerativeAI #MLTraining #DataQuality #AIBias

[Brian Geisel @bgeisel1]

Hiring software engineers for their skills? Congrats—you just hired average.

We’ve solved some of the hardest problems in tech. Not by chasing buzzwords—

But by hiring for greatness.

💡 The truth? Someone “great” at TypeScript... is probably just average at it.

Because most people sit on the bell curve. The real outliers? They think differently.

They push boundaries. They solve problems, not just syntax.

In our interviews, we don’t just ask what you know.

We dig into how you think.

🚀 Hire for greatness. Let them run. Let them grow.

Bet on people. They’ll blow your mind.

#Hiring #SoftwareEngineering #TechTalent #EngineeringCulture #StartupHiring #DeveloperLife #TechRecruiting #ProblemSolvers #GreatEngineers #ThinkDifferent #TechInterviews #InnovationDriven #AICompany #PeopleFirst

[Brian Geisel @bgeisel1]

Everyone’s obsessed with big A.I. models. But what if the small ones are secretly better?

Large language models get all the hype. They train on everything—including the junk.

📚 Pizza recipes with glue? Yep. That too.

It’s brute force brilliance… but it’s messy.

Meanwhile, smaller models are skipping the noise and training only on high-quality data.

They’re faster, lighter, and in specific niches, they can actually outperform the giants.

💡 It’s not about size. It’s about focus.

And sometimes, the smartest model is the smallest one in the room.

👉 Follow for more on the real AI glow-ups no one’s talking about (yet).

#AI #MachineLearning #SmallModels #LLM #GPT4 #AIModels #TechExplained #DeepLearning #Transformers #FutureOfAI #ArtificialIntelligence #UnderratedTech #AIGlowUp #EfficientAI

[Brian Geisel @bgeisel1]

Why are we generating synthetic data for AI?

Here’s what no one tells you: AI models are hungry for data then the real world can provide.

Instead of just making stuff up, we generate synthetic data which mirrors reality.

🧬 We engineer our data to mirror real world patterns and probabilities.
And also how factors interact and depend on each other. Just like in the real world.

The result: our synthetic data is so realistic we’ve actually had customers double check thinking we had actually sent them real data.

It is not about copying reality. It is about coding reality so thoroughly that even experts have to look twice.

Want to see how we build these hyper-real datasets? Follow for Part Three.

#AI #SyntheticData #MachineLearning #DataEngineering #PrivacyByDesign #DeepLearning #ModelTraining #FutureOfAI

[Brian Geisel @bgeisel1]

We’ve finally solved the data labeling problem—once and for all.

Most teams spend two years just getting to the starting line.

🗂️ One year to collect images.
🔖 Another to label them.

And even with AI help? It’s often wrong.

Bad labels are worse than none at all.

That’s why we built Symge—where every data point comes pre-labeled.

No delays. No human error. Just ready-to-train data from day one.

🚀 Two years of grunt work—gone in a click.

Your model doesn’t need patience.

It needs synthetic data.

#AI #SyntheticData #MachineLearning #DataLabeling #DeepLearning #ComputerVision #AITraining #ImageRecognition #TechBreakthrough #MLModels #FutureOfAI #LabelingProblem #AIAutomation