Wiley W. | Startup Founders Coach

Wiley Welch

5.0

(11)

Validating Your Business with AI.

Studied at Sandbox

Works at Plaibook

Successful clients at

Available tomorrow at 11:00 PM UTC

Protected by the Leland Experience Guarantee

Available tomorrow at 11:00 PM UTC

Questions? Start chatting with this coach before you get started.

Wiley's Coaching Offerings

Custom hourly · $75/hr

Get help with AI Fundamentals, Go-to-Market Strategy, and .

Wiley also coaches for AI Automation & Agents and AI for Data & Analytics. View all.

Wiley’s Startup Founders Qualifications

Experience level: Manager

Wiley has helped clients get into these companies:

I'm a 3x founder and CTO who's shipped products as a sole engineer, scaled startups from the inside, and led an open-source AI research team. I was a top performer in Sandbox's SB05 Cohort, one of the most selective startup accelerators for Utah founders. I'll help you cut what's killing your runway, ship what matters, and leverage AI to move like a team twice your size.

Wiley can help with:

AI Fundamentals

Go-to-Market Strategy

Branding

AI Agents

Business Strategy Development

App Development

AI Automation

Wiley also coaches for AI Automation & Agents and AI for Data & Analytics. View all.

About Wiley

I'm a scrappy operator and engineer who helps companies push AI to the front of their business — using it to do the hardest parts of the work. I've founded companies, scaled startups as an early engineer, led an open-source AI research team, and taught myself Thai well enough to teach it professionally. The throughline: I find ways in when the front door is locked, and I coach clients to do the same.

Why do I coach?

I coach because I love watching people realize they can solve their own problems. I spent a couple of years as a language teacher, and the moments that stuck with me weren't the perfect test scores — they were the ones where a student's face lit up because they'd just figured something out on their own. That shift from "I need help with this" to "wait, I just did it" is the most rewarding thing I've ever been part of. That's why I've moved into coaching people to be scrappier and more resourceful. So much of what holds us back is waiting — waiting for permission, for the right tools, for someone else to show us how. I'd rather help you build the muscle of figuring it out yourself, so the next problem (and the one after that) feels a little less daunting.

Work Experience

Software Engineer

Plaibook

January 2026 - Present

Architected and launched Plaibook Webchat, an AI-powered lead-capture widget that converts anonymous web traffic into qualified leads, unlocking a new revenue channel. Integrated with Plaibook’s LLM-driven sales engine using a unified, serverless TypeScript/React/AWS Lambda stack. Delivered one-line embeddable chat infrastructure supporting real-time AI conversations and automatic contact association.

Chief Technology Officer

Staff Better

September 2025 - January 2026

Built the product solo. Zero to production as the sole engineer — 277 commits, full-stack TypeScript/Next.js/Supabase/AWS, deployed at staff-better.com. Scaled to 10,000 WhatsApp messages/day per client. Architected event-driven pipelines on AWS Lambda with webhook orchestration, rate limiting, and retry mechanisms to handle high-volume delivery reliably. Cleared the legal moat most competitors never cross. Navigated WhatsApp Business API compliance end-to-end — registration, A2P approval, and legal documentation — giving Staff Better a competitive edge out of the gate.

AI Researcher & Team Lead

Brigham Young University

September 2024 - August 2025

Built an AI coding tutor trained on university project data to guide students toward solutions without revealing answers, improving independent problem-solving. Led a 4-engineer team in developing fine-tuning and evaluation pipelines, scaling the platform to 1,000+ active users. Improved AI response accuracy by 30% through iterative prompt engineering, contextual retrieval, and feedback-driven model refinement.