Derek Herman

Commander
DISC Type : D

Founder at Stealth AI Startup

Portland, Oregon Metropolitan Area, United States

Overview

Derek Herman is the founder of a stealth AI startup focused on MLOps for real-time cognition. An engineering leader with nearly two decades of experience, he has a background as a CTO and holds a Google Cloud Professional Cloud Architect certification, specializing in building cloud-native platforms.

He has been recognized twice as a "Recent Rockstar" for his significant open-source contributions to the WordPress project.

Personality Overview

Decisive

Strong-Willed

Risk-Taker

They like to move fast and expect the same from others.  They prefer to be the ones controlling the conversation or defining the terms. They take a lot of pride in personal achievements.

Topics They Care About

Composable MLOps
He is currently building a platform to redefine MLOps, creating tools for real-time orchestration, classifier development, and building intelligent systems from end to end.
AI Context Pipelines
He believes the key differentiator for AI products is not the language model but the quality of the context pipeline that feeds it.
Valuing Senior Talent
He expresses concern that industry leadership failures are leading to senior engineers being out of work, emphasizing that experience is not optional for complex systems.

Media Appearances

Derek has no verified media appearances

Work History

6-2025
Founder at Stealth AI Startup
12-2024
Fractional CTO / Principal Engineer at Stealth
7-2023 - 2-2025
Principal Engineer at 10up
12-2022 - 7-2023
Chief Technology Officer at Yoast BV
9-2018 - 4-2022
Chief Technology Officer at XWP

Education

2007 - 2008
Computer Science from Oregon Institute of Technology
2006 - 2007
Associate of Science - A.S. from Portland Community College

More Information

Social Presence :

Prographics :

Exp : 9 Location : Portland, Oregon Metropolitan Area, United States Job Level : Leadership Designation : Founder at Stealth AI Startup
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Insights For Selling To Derek

During A Call Or A Meeting

DO's

  • Objectively showcase the impact that your product creates
  • Hold your ground without indulging in one-upmanship
  • Be respectful but crisp

DONT's

  • Don’t focus on process and rules, give the impression of being a ‘gets it done’ person
  • Don't try too hard to forge relationships with them
  • Avoid being too verbose

When Cold Calling

When Writing An Email

While Negotiating & Closing

    The secret to closing fast with Derek is

  • Conviction around the impact matters the most to them, followed by a sense of achievement and ROI.
  • Will you ever get a clear answer from Derek

  • If they decide not to use your product, they will say no clearly.

Insights For Deal Planning

    How fast (or slow) will Derek move?

  • They can reach decisions fairly quickly if they are convinced.
  • Can Derek take some risk or not?

  • They don’t mind risks but can be quite binary about them.

You And Derek

Personality Compatibility


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