Founding Story: Max
Today, I'm excited to announce Windmill, a company I co-founded with Brian Distelburger and Mark Tanner. After a year of work behind the scenes, we're finally ready to share our vision. Building a company has been my lifelong dream, and I can't wait to show you what we’re working on.
My journey to founding Windmill started at Yext, where I joined fresh out of college, optimizing A/B tests for their website.
I'll never forget my first management role — leading a single PM. I threw myself into it completely, determined to be the best manager I could be. And you know what? I was good at it. I mastered the delicate balance of guidance and autonomy, staying close enough to unblock obstacles while giving them room to grow. I gathered detailed feedback from their collaborators to make sure I had a well-rounded perspective and never shied away from hard conversations — if something wasn't working, I told them directly. Overall, this system worked well — especially for a first shot - but it was basically another full-time job.
Fast forward a few years, and I was leading a 50-person product team. But something felt off. The bigger my team grew, the more I noticed a painful paradox.
My superpower has always been building amazing products — thriving at the intersection of engineering, product, design, and marketing. While this expertise helped me grow my team, I found myself caught in a frustrating trade-off
The more people I managed, the less time I spent actually building products
It felt impossible to win. More time managing meant less time crafting products. More time in the product trenches meant less time helping my team grow their skills. There had to be a better way.
During my final years at Yext, I became fascinated with AI's potential to scale traditionally high-touch tasks. Then it hit me — what if AI could help scale great management itself? What if we could take that personalized, hands-on approach that works magic with a team of 1 and extend it to teams of 50 or even 500?
Well that’s exactly what we’re doing at Windmill. With the latest advancements in AI it’s finally possible to build the system I wish I had as I scaled my team.
Our mission is to give AI Superpowers to managers, and I can't wait to show you what we're working on soon. If you want to learn more or just stay up to date, sign up here or follow us Windmill!
