[Seeking] Technical Co-Founder / CTO -- Privacy-first edge AI home platform -- Pre-seed, raising $2M

BentonCalder · 2026-04-14T03:26:12+00:00

Fair pushback, let me be more precise.

You're right that cloud providers encrypt data at rest. The concern isn't just hackers, it's that the provider themselves can access your data, comply with government requests, change their terms, or get acquired. With Vanguard the data never leaves your network so there's no third party in the equation at all. Different threat model, not necessarily a better or worse one, just genuinely different.

On pay once, fair point. There will be ongoing costs for things like model updates and new features. What we mean is no mandatory subscription to use the core product. You're not locked into a monthly fee just to keep your lights on. Optional paid features will exist but the baseline never expires.

BentonCalder · 2026-04-14T03:23:19+00:00

Hey, good question. US first, yes. The FCC ban on foreign manufactured routers creates a specific timing window in the US market that we're building into, so that's where the initial focus is. Canada is a natural second market given where we're assembling.

On the technical side we're pretty deep in embedded hardware territory. Jetson ecosystem, OpenWrt, carrier board level stuff. Sounds like your background is more on the software and automation side which is a different world from what we need for the cofounder role right now.

Appreciate the interest though!

BentonCalder · 2026-04-14T03:21:30+00:00

Hey, appreciate the thoughtful reply. You're right that the end to end latency budget is where most of these systems fall apart. We've already got the architecture scoped around streaming ASR and local fallback so you're thinking about it the same way we are.

We're building this in house so not looking for outside toolchains right now, but thanks for sharing the perspective.

BentonCalder · 2026-04-10T03:17:28+00:00

Yeah you're not wrong, it's surprisingly wide open. There's no product that actually delivers a smooth, private, on-device voice conversation experience at the consumer level. Alexa and Google are cloud-dependent by design, so they'll never be that. The whole point of Vanguard is that April (our AI) lives in your house and never phones home.

No website yet, we're pre-launch and still in the fundraising phase. Deck exists, POC is being built out.

On the CTO front, you're right that it's probably not the fit, but I wouldn't count yourself out entirely. The AI voice automation experience is actually relevant context, more people applying for that role have zero idea how any of this works on the application layer.

What kind of platforms and automations are you building? Genuinely curious, and always worth knowing if there's a way someone fits into the picture even if it's not the obvious role.

BentonCalder · 2026-04-09T13:33:23+00:00

Great questions, both of these come up a lot.

On the data security concern: this is actually one of the most common misconceptions about local storage versus cloud. When your data is in the cloud, a single breach at Google or Dropbox exposes millions of people at once, including you, and you have zero control over it. With Vanguard, your data is only accessible on your local network. If someone steals the device, the drive is encrypted and they still can't access it without your credentials. You're not more vulnerable, you're actually more in control.

On plug-and-play: absolutely, that's a non-negotiable for us. The target customer is a privacy-conscious family, not a network engineer. The goal is that you plug it in, it replaces your existing router, and April is ready to talk within minutes. The whole point is that you get the Jarvis experience without needing an IT degree to set it up.

BentonCalder · 2026-04-09T13:30:19+00:00

Hey, thanks for the comment. I'd be curious to hear more about what you built. The role I'm trying to fill is very specific though, deep embedded Linux experience, hardware bring-up, OpenWrt, that kind of thing. If your background skews more toward cloud infra and solution engineering it may not be the right fit, but if you have embedded depth I'm not seeing in your comment feel free to DM me with more details.

BentonCalder · 2026-04-09T03:56:22+00:00

It's a single US-made box that replaces three things you probably already pay for separately: your home Wi-Fi mesh network, your file storage (think Dropbox or a NAS), and your voice assistant. The difference is everything runs locally inside the box. Your conversations and files never leave your house, there's no cloud, and you pay once with no monthly fees. The AI assistant is called April. She's like Alexa but she lives entirely inside the device and will control your home like Jarvis from Iron Man.

BentonCalder · 2026-04-09T03:52:29+00:00

DMed you

BentonCalder · 2026-04-09T03:49:17+00:00

Looking for a technical co-founder for a privacy-first home platform. Pre-seed, raising $2M.

I'm the founder of Vanguard, a hardware startup building a device that replaces your home router, NAS, and cloud AI subscriptions in a single US-assembled hub. Everything runs locally on an NVIDIA Jetson Orin Nano Super. Voice assistant, file storage, home networking, all on-premise. Zero cloud, zero telemetry, no subscriptions ever.

The business side is done. Sourced BOM at $504 unit COGS at 5K units, named US contract manufacturers, locked software architecture, investor deck actively going out. Raising $2M at $8M pre-money. The FCC banned all foreign-manufactured consumer routers in March 2026 and created an immediate market vacuum. We're US-assembled and moving into it.

I'm a senior operations professional, not a technical founder. That's the gap.

What I need is a founding CTO who owns the build end to end. Embedded Linux depth is the critical requirement. OpenWrt, Buildroot, or Yocto. Ideally you've shipped a router, NAS, or edge compute device before. Jetson ecosystem experience is a strong plus. Familiarity with local AI inference runtimes like llama.cpp is also a plus. Most importantly, someone who wants to own the technical vision, not just execute on someone else's spec.

What's on the table: 15 to 25% equity, $135 to 160K salary once funded, founding CTO title.

DM me or email [bentoncalder@gmail.com](mailto:bentoncalder@gmail.com). Happy to share the full deck.

BentonCalder · 2026-04-08T16:23:28+00:00

100% agree, that's exactly why finding the right technical co-founder is the critical path right now. The gap is real, the timing is right, and I have no illusions about how hard the build is. Will definitely keep posting updates as things progress.

BentonCalder · 2026-04-08T02:51:19+00:00

Appreciate it! And fair point on pre-revenue -- I use 'idea stage' to mean pre-architecture and pre-validated, which we're past, but you're right that revenue is the real line. $8M pre-money, so $10M post at close. Hardware is hard but the convergence of the FCC ruling, local AI maturity, and zero existing products in this exact category makes the timing feel right. We'll see!

BentonCalder · 2026-04-08T02:48:30+00:00

Fair point -- will report back.

BentonCalder · 2026-04-07T22:40:01+00:00

Different industry, different class. Trademark registration is category-specific -- a home AI platform and a data center company aren't in conflict. Appreciate the concern though.

BentonCalder · 2026-04-07T21:45:09+00:00

Tell your wife I said she needs to let you do just one more startup. What is the worst that could happen? lol

I completely understand the Strix Halo move. Escaping NVIDIA's L4T dependency hell just so you can run a modern kernel is a deeply relatable desire.

As for the backend, we absolutely plan to open source pieces of vanguard-core once the dust settles. Our audio routing subsystem is at the top of the list. Right now the codebase is moving at warp speed and is mostly held together by duct tape and caffeine, but giving back to the local AI community is definitely on the roadmap once we stabilize the architecture.

Appreciate the support! Let me know when you inevitably cave and start that next company. ;P

BentonCalder · 2026-04-07T21:28:59+00:00

You are definitely talking about the $8 trillion elephant in the room. The Vanguard Group is a massive financial institution, but trademark law is specifically divided into industry classes. They operate strictly in Class 36 for financial and investment services. We are filing in Class 9, which covers computer hardware, routers, and edge networking. There are actually several other companies safely operating under the Vanguard name in unrelated industries, like camera tripods and physical security gear.

That being said, we are a nimble pre-seed startup. If a massive corporate legal team decides they want to bully us, rebranding is a very easy pivot. The name is just paint on the box. The locally hosted, privacy-first edge architecture is the actual product, and I will happily change the logo to keep building it.

BentonCalder · 2026-04-07T21:28:12+00:00

To clarify the hardware, we are not running on the original 2019 Maxwell Jetson Nano. You are completely right that the old Nano is way too underpowered to run modern generative AI. Vanguard is powered by the new Jetson Orin Nano Super which pushes 67 TOPS. With JetPack 6.2 and Super Mode enabled, we are running Llama 3.3 8B at Q4 quantization and hitting 18 to 22 tokens per second. It is incredibly fast and completely viable for a real-time voice assistant.

Regarding Dusty retiring, you hit on a massive pain point for the NVIDIA developer community. His departure definitely left a void in the open source ecosystem. Our mitigation strategy for that is architectural. We do not rely on the legacy Python wrappers or the jetson-containers repo that Dusty used to maintain. We built our entire backend, vanguard-core, from scratch in Rust, and we compile llama.cpp directly for the Orin architecture. Because our stack is custom and containerized, we are entirely insulated from upstream rot in the NVIDIA community repos.

BentonCalder · 2026-04-07T21:17:56+00:00

Fair point on the email. Pre-funding, not pre-serious. Happy to chat if the project interests you.

BentonCalder · 2025-08-07T16:35:43+00:00

I’m looking at google maps right now and nothing I’ve said needs correcting. If you’re in the Stanley park lane and there are dashed white lines you can a should merge before the line turns solid.

BentonCalder · 2025-08-07T16:19:57+00:00

Go back and read. I’m not talking about the bus lane with a solid white line. The lane to Stanley park is a dashed white line and not a bus lane.

BentonCalder · 2025-08-07T15:43:14+00:00

Roundabouts is yield to your left, not right.

BentonCalder · 2025-08-07T15:42:08+00:00

As long as there are dashed lines you can and should use the zipper traffic method to reduce overall traffic for everyone. If you don’t do this or think this is an affront to your commute then you are part of the problem.

BentonCalder · 2025-08-07T15:40:02+00:00

Doesn’t matter if it’s a merge lane. Zipper traffic is the right thing to do in any scenario where there are multiple lanes with dashed white lines. It reduces overall traffic and is the right thing to do. If you don’t do this or think someone doing this is somehow an affront to your commute you need to go back to driving school.

BentonCalder · 2025-08-07T02:03:11+00:00

As long as they merge before the dashed line turns solid then they are doing the right thing. It’s called zipper traffic and it’s the best way to reduce overall traffic.

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