Situations Mentorship The Learning App Resources

Executive-level mentorship · founders and mid-market B2B software companies

Establish a viable build function in your company.

Machines now write the code really well. I develop the humans who decide what it should write for your company, and when it's ready to ship. For a solo founder, that's you. For a company, it's internal talent you've identified or that we seek out together.

Schedule a 30-minute call Write to me No gatekeepers, no intake form.

The workweekly working sessionsdirect access between them

The commitment$4,000 / monthbilled quarterly in advance · no obligation past the first quarter

Capacitythree to five at a timewhen the roster is full, the next conversation waits

Afterthe learning app stays with youinstalled in week one, configured to your situation

Who this is for

The engagement starts by naming the situation you're actually in.

It's the configuration everything else gets built against. Open the one that sounds like yours.

The engagement

Designed to leave a build function inside your company — not a retainer behind it.

Every engagement runs on the Viable Coder kit — the same learning app sold on its own as the Playbook, at four prices set by who holds the licence. We install it in week one, configure it to your situation, and it stays with you when I leave.

01 · FIND

The right humans

Inside your company first — the support lead who keeps proposing better workflows, the ops person who built a tool that actually works. If no one is there yet, we write the profile together and I sit in the interviews. I don't source candidates; I recognize the ones who will hold the judgement.

02 · START

Honest capability assessment

Where they are, and where the company is. What's realistic. The technical debt and constraints that shape what comes next.

03 · SETUP

The product roadmap

A clear plan for what you'll build, what tools you'll use, what your customers will feel.

04 · EVERY WEEK

Working sessions, and direct access between them

Structured, purposeful, tied to your product reality and the person doing the work. Questions don't wait for the calendar; real decisions get real input when they matter.

05 · NETWORK

Community of builders

Introductions, meetups, and workshops with current and past mentees doing the same hard thing.

06 · HANDOFF

Built to end well

Engagements conclude when the function is genuinely theirs — and the kit, configured to your situation, stays with you. So does the shop it compiles: your agents and house rules, portable to every repo you work in after I leave.

Participation in the inquiry is optional

I conduct an ongoing public inquiry — measuring the long-term viability of building this way across nine dimensions, on the inquiry side and Data. The subject of that inquiry is me, by default. Mentees who want their own work studied the same way can opt in to the cohort, with granular consent. It is never required. The mentorship engagement does not ask you to share data, change how you work, or participate in any measurement. If you want only the mentorship, you get only the mentorship.

Proof in practice · Louisville, KY

Stonewood Financial owns its own product roadmap.

From customer-support employee to Director of Product Development & Software. They own their own product destiny — not because they hired a vendor, but because someone already inside was found, and developed into the person who runs their build function.

On teaching

Clay is a natural teacher. He's able to convey highly technical knowledge in a way that's easy to understand for both the technical and non-technical alike. He connects big, transformative ideas to the day-to-day work we're engaging in.

Becky SwansburgCEO, Stonewood Financial

On the work that came out the other side

The biggest thing I've gotten from working with Clay is confidence backed by real capability. A year ago, I wouldn't have even attempted something like this. Now I've built a full system — integrations, AI workflows, data models — the whole thing. And I did it in a way that actually holds up.

Eddie SmithDirector of Product Development & Software, Stonewood Financial

Investment & capacity

Doing this well matters more than doing it often.

Limited to three to five engagements at a time, alongside my active work building AI-native software companies. Engagements run remotely, with periodic in-person time where it makes sense — often in the US, Canada, the UK, and the EU.

Monthly retainer

$4,000 / month

Covers weekly sessions, between-session access, and community.

Billing

Quarterly, in advance

No obligation past the first quarter — continue only if it's working.

Capacity

3–5 at a time

When the roster is full, the next conversation has to wait.

Or · equity arrangement

Equity in lieu of fees

Open to equity compensation for early-stage startups where the work warrants it and the cash equation hasn't caught up yet.

Self-directed · the Playbook

The same learning app, from $95, one-time.

The learning app I install with every mentee — curriculum, exercises, working agents, telemetry, dashboards, and the portable shop your configuration compiles for your own repos. Four prices, set by who holds the licence: $3,900 for a company (five seats and one working session with me), $995 for an individual, $495 for a qualifying startup, $95 for a student.

The learning app

Why this is paid — and what is freely given

The corporate engagement is paid because the expertise behind it was earned on what was, for several years, a fairly lonely hill — well before companies had the appetite to invest in it. That learning carries real cost, and real value. Students, recent grads, and people my own kids' ages are a different conversation: the kit has a student price under a hundred dollars, and the conversation itself is not a paid one. Schedule time with me directly — I keep room on the calendar for it. More on that on the About page.

Not a consultant. Not a vendor. Someone in the arena.

S. Clay Turner

Thirty years of building software companies, with multiple exits — the pattern recognition that only comes from doing it repeatedly. Currently technical co-founder of two AI-native startups, Soaring Titan and Maximum Automotive Intelligence. This is not theory; it's what I do every week. The mentorship I offer is the version of the work I'd want from someone who'd actually done the thing — not a deck, not a framework, not a certification. Real builds, real decisions, real ownership transfer.

One distinction, so you know which door you're at. If you want a development partner — a team that builds your software, with AI, and hands you the result — that's Soaring Titan. If you want your own people to build it, and to hold the decisions about what gets built and whether it's ready, that's this. The line between the two is who builds it. What I keep finding, as of October 2026: every company I talk to is going to need this function, whether or not it has a name for it yet.

About Clay LinkedIn

Start where you are.

Same kit, two paths. The difference is access to me, not access to the doctrine. Students and early-career builders: the conversation is free.

Talk to Clay → See the learning app →

One list, no drip.

New Resources, Research, Data readings, and kit editions. This list is the only announcement I send.