Dave Selinger · Founder & Operator
Shared systems, developer experience, and governance layers underneath what customers actually see. The parts that keep things calm when the surface gets complicated are where I’ve spent the work.
Range
Three verticals with wildly different tolerances — and one customer archetype underneath all of them.
B2B2C engagements with global payments networks, major retail infrastructure, worldwide commerce deployments, and top-tier productivity platforms. Fortune 500 buyers set their own bar; success meant meeting it on their terms, learning how each business expected the work done before tailoring architecture, process, or handoffs.
The throughline: observability at board-room reliability. Security as prerequisite, not afterthought.
Deep empathy for campus administrators, IT experts, and teachers focused on curriculum — not the friction between them and the students. Everyone who drives a car needs to know where the headlights, wipers, and speedometer are, regardless of brand, model, or design intent. A mic needs to hear the teacher, content has to reach the screen, operation and maintenance have to scale without breaking the administrator's bank.
The throughline: serviceability at scale — districts and campuses don't have infinite resources. They have a handful of smart folks (in my experience, 5 techs covering 900 classrooms wasn't unusual) triaging technology issues across hundreds of campus spaces.
Security-first integrations with classification requirements. A/V systems living on networks national security operates. Tools for setup, configuration, and management built to exceed requirements — then DOD/JITC-certified so they could move fast once approved.
The throughline: security as the bar; observability and serviceability built within it.
The throughline. Whichever vertical, the recipe was always the same. Empathy was the source — knowing what each operations-leader actually carried, what their business was trying to deliver. Capability was the lever — design criteria that traveled with me: observability at their level, security at the release gate, serviceability at the technician’s level. The product earned its stripes not at launch but on the hundredth quiet Monday morning two years later.
“In my past, I built the products and tools. My customers built what the world’s major organizations run on.”
Principles, embodied
Rocalyn’s four principles aren’t marketing posture — they describe how I’ve operated for 25+ years.
Bootstrapped product-led cybersecurity from zero. Shifted security left — release-gate discipline, not retroactive retrofit. Trust earned through operational outcomes, not compliance theater.
Sponsored an Atomic Design system across Brad Frost's project-to-product crossing — dispersed teams spoke one language. Built platforms observability-first, so what matters surfaces early enough to act.
Led cross-functional orgs shipping platform and system-level products company-wide. Connective-tissue work compounds — the win is planning quality into the work, not reacting faster at release.
Software I've helped launch has stood the test of time. Sovereignty means the people who inherited it can still do their work — long after the handoff.
“I’ve founded Rocalyn to carry that stance forward. Most of my experience has been building the thing behind the thing — for mutual benefit of customer and business success.”
Current lane
Building unfair advantages in products and organizations has been my work for decades. The thrill of victory hasn’t worn off.
Not a straight line that got me here — IT in the late ’90s, graphics engineering at the turn of the century, a stint in consulting and marketing — part of why I think about platforms as connective tissue rather than as territory.
Seventeen of those years were at Extron, leading platform work across software, firmware, and hardware, plus enough adjacent gaps that I sponsored UX and bootstrapped product-led cybersecurity along the way. Rocalyn is the next early room.
I expect Rocalyn work to take on four shapes.
The shape bends to the work, not the reverse. Current focus: AI-amplified platform work — edge intelligence, applied AI agents, privacy-first systems, and process optimization where AI compounds with what’s already there. Small, elite, compounding.
If you’re working in these areas and want fresh senior thinking on your immediate problem, reach out. Everyone benefits from outside eyes — especially when they come with twenty-five years of pattern recognition behind them.
Ask me why a workshop’s worth of tools beats a single shiny one — why the right pick in the right place opens new doors without closing existing ones, and turns cost reduction into leveraged investment.
Reach out to Rocalyn
Founder directly
founder@rocalyn.comNow that you've got to know me, want to grab a coffee and chat? Also on LinkedIn.