Will Turnage

Experience

I&CO

Director of Technology 2016 - 2024 (over 8 years)

Lead technology for I&CO, a global innovation firm and product incubation studio with offices in New York and Tokyo. Responsibilities for this role include:

• Act... more

R/GA

SVP, Technology 2006 - 2016 (about 10 years)

Lead the Technology team in R/GA's NY headquarters. Focus on building products and services for our clients, mentoring and developing talent, leading technology-centric new... more

Exit

Vital Score

Advisor

CHRGR

Advisor

Punchfork

Advisor

R/GA Ventures

Mentor

Sony Music Entertainment

Director, New Technologies 2000 - 2006 (over 5 years)

Led engineering for a small, internal team focused on New Media experiences for Sony Music’s roster of 2000+ artists

Projects included enhanced CDs, PSP titles, online... more

Employee

Sony Music Entertainment, R/GA, I&CO

Advisor

Vital Score, Punchfork, CHRGR

Mentor

R/GA Ventures

Education

About

Achievements

Anyone can build an app now. Not everyone can build a business.

I'm a fractional CTO who helps founders go from AI-generated prototype to scalable, shippable software. The gap between a working demo and a real product has never looked wider, and I help close it.

I work with early-stage founders and venture studios to set technical direction, build engineering teams, and ship production-grade software. My focus is the judgment layer: architecture decisions, build-vs-buy tradeoffs, and making sure AI is used where it actually creates value, not just where it's trendy.

I'm still a builder. I write code, design systems, and get deep into the stack alongside the teams I lead. I've spent my career in design-led, product-driven organizations, and I believe engineering works best when it's tightly integrated with business strategy and design thinking.

More info at https://turnage.co

Describe the most impressive thing you've done.

Skills

Mobile Development User Experience Design Product Development Concept to Execution Frontend Development Leadership Google Cloud Platform (GCP) AWS Natural Language Processing Management Product Strategy Business Strategy Anthropic Claude openAI Gemini Agentic AI LLMs LLM Frameworks (Langchain, Claude, LLamaIndex) RAG Technologies Embedding Models Vect Claude Code

Locations

New York City

Q&A

What's your favorite non-business book?

Too many to mention, but current choice would be N.K. Jemisin's Broken Earth trilogy.

What's your super power?

Empathy

What's the most useful business-related book you've ever read?

The Checklist Manifesto is a classic, but recently I've enjoyed Sarah Drasner's "Engineering Management for the Rest of Us"

What's the best way for people to get in touch with you?

Email is easiest. Or I have open office hours.

What words of wisdom do you live by?

“I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” - Maya Angelou

What was the most impactful class you took in school?

Sitcom writing

Will Turnage (He/Him)

Founding Engineer • Full-Stack + AI • I ship production software, design systems, and make the architecture decisions that turn early-stage ideas into real businesses.