PS C:\Users\Tig> whoami

Tigger Kindel

I build products, teams, and the occasional ridiculous machine.

Useful work happens where customer obsession, technical taste, and operational discipline collide.

I helped build Windows, Internet Explorer, Windows Media Center, Windows Phone, Echo, Alexa, Alexa Smart Home, and the product and engineering systems that helped turn Control4 into Snap One. Now I teach leaders and teams how to build better operating systems, hire stronger people, make sharper product decisions, and catch up on AI without theater.

Office hours GitHub LinkedIn

Origin story

I was Charlie in the corporate world. Tigger is the more accurate version.

My sister gave me the nickname when I was a baby. After 30 years using Charlie at Microsoft, Amazon, Control4, SnapAV, and a few startups, I reclaimed Tigger because it fits. I am bouncy, distractible in useful ways, and happiest when I can take a system apart, understand it, and make the damn thing work better.

Related claim: I am gruntled. Not "happy" as branding. Gruntled: contented on purpose, mildly smug about a real English word most people think is a joke. Happiness is a choice. Being gruntled is better.

That applies to products. It applies to teams. It also applies to a 1995 BMW 540i M-Sport with electrical problems. Same brain, different wiring harness.

The arc

It looks random until you notice the same experiment running underneath.

The experiment is simple: can explicit mechanisms, customer obsession, product judgment, and high-standards leadership make teams predictably better?

1988
WinPrint in a dorm room
Snot-nosed kid, Windows SDK, dorm-room printer pain. The pattern started early: find a rough edge, build the tool.
1990-2011
Eight different careers at MS
Developer support, developer relations, platform work, browsers, home server, media center, phone, and products used by absurd numbers of people.
2011-2013
Startups and FreeBusy
I left to build my own companies, including FreeBusy, and learned what it feels like when nobody else owns the outcome.
2013-2018
Amazon as leadership grad school
Echo, Alexa, and Alexa Smart Home were real delivery at scale and a concentrated education in mechanisms, narratives, tenets, hiring, and operating cadence.
2018-2020
Control4, then SnapAV
I joined Control4 as CTO/CPO, realized it was a turnaround, and used the 4,500-product company to test whether the systems I had learned really worked when I had the authority to install them. They did. The product and engineering reset helped enable the Control4/SnapAV merger and the path to the Snap One IPO. I left when the team did not need me in the middle anymore.
2020-now
Space, office hours, and the surprise ending
I thought coaching might help me break into space and find another C-level operating role. Instead, the coaching itself became the work. More than half my time is pro bono, because that is where the joy is.

When people thank me for helping, I usually say: this is how I give back. I was blessed with ridiculous learning from mentors and managers. I do not really do nonprofits or standard charity stuff. I give back by helping useful people and teams get unstuck. KLD is opportunistically a business that creates cash flow around work I would do anyway.

Receipts

I have opinions because I have shipped the work.

Microsoft

Platforms, shells, browsers, phones, and living rooms.

Windows, Internet Explorer, Windows Media Center, and Windows Phone taught me how product, developer ecosystems, and organizational systems actually interact.

Amazon

Voice, devices, smart home, and operating mechanisms.

Echo, Alexa, and Alexa Smart Home taught me how to scale with narratives, mechanisms, customer obsession, and a healthy intolerance for hand-waving.

Control4 and SnapAV

Turnaround work with real operating authority.

As CTO/CPO, I reset product and engineering systems at a 4,500-product company, then helped enable the Control4/SnapAV merger and Snap One IPO path. People still there tell me many of those systems remain in place.

Training

Leadership, hiring, product, operations, and AI.

I teach flexible curriculum for teams that need practical tools, not motivational fog. More than half the time is pro bono because this is how I give back; the work is concrete: decisions, mechanisms, hiring loops, product judgment, and AI adoption.

Agentic work

WinPrint 3.0, MCEC 3.0, and Terminal.Gui v2.

I am using agents to build real tools in public. WinPrint 3.0 and MCEC 3.0 were built completely agentically; Terminal.Gui v2 is where the .NET TUI obsession lives.

Operating system

The pattern keeps repeating.

Build from the customer. Make the mechanism explicit. Hire for slope and judgment. Debate hard. Write it down. Measure whether the thing works. Fix it when it does not.