Marvin D. Scaff

I take the intellectual frameworks of legendary thinkers and turn them into software that scales their impact. I've been doing it for thirty years — from Regis McKenna's competitive positioning at Intel to autonomous AI venture creation.

What I'm building now

The infrastructure for venture creation was designed for a world that no longer exists. I'm replacing it — with AI that ships, not AI that advises.

Acceleràre
accelerare.com →
Forward-deployed AI engineers who embed directly into your org — your codebase, your standup, your roadmap. Not consultants with slide decks. Engineers with commit access. We scope, embed, and start shipping within two weeks.
2 wk
Time to embed
StudioLens.ai
studiolens.ai →
The assembly line for venture creation. Detects convergences across technology shifts, market gaps, and regulatory tailwinds. One AutoResearch cycle produced 50 investment-ready ventures across 7 market clusters.
50
Ventures
7
Clusters
0 hrs
Manual research
Marvin D. Scaff
About

Builder of Guruware

I've spent my career at the intersection of visionary thinking and working code. Starting with diagnostic tools for the Apple // at age 15, I discovered what became a lifelong pattern: taking the intellectual frameworks of the world's most influential thinkers and turning them into software that scales their impact.

Apple // diagnostic tools

From Regis McKenna's competitive positioning to Gary Hamel's innovation frameworks, from Bradley Gale's customer value analysis to Linda Yates'growth incubation model — I build the platforms that make genius repeatable. Now, with Acceleràre and StudioLens.ai, I'm applying everything I've learned to replace the broken infrastructure of venture creation.

Stanford — Lean Launchpad Educators (Steve Blank & Jerry Engel)
UC Berkeley — Semantic Computing, AI & Cognitive Computing
White House — Innovation Fellow, 2011 & 2012
Disney — Innovations Award, 1993
Venture Creation AIKnowledge GraphsSemantic AIAgent TechnologyComputer VisionIoT / Hardware11+ Patents
The Original Guruware · 1994

CRUSH the Competition

In the late 1970s, Intel was losing the microprocessor war to Motorola. Regis McKenna and Intel's sales team devised Operation CRUSH— a systematic competitive positioning methodology that became the blueprint for how technology companies win markets. That program also gave birth to Andy Grove's OKR framework, later carried to Google by John Doerr. I built the software that made CRUSH deployable.

Marvin Scaff with Regis McKennaWith Regis McKenna
Regis McKenna with Steve JobsRegis McKenna & Steve Jobs
Watch · archive

Regis McKenna on CRUSH

Original clip from the interactive platform era — Regis on the methodology behind the product.

Relationship Marketing by Regis McKenna
The Regis Touch by Regis McKenna
Total Access by Regis McKenna
Who's Afraid of Big Blue by Regis McKenna
1994
Year
KP
Kleiner Perkins
11-step
Process
The Visionary

Regis McKenna helped launch Apple, Intel, and Genentech. A mentor to Steve Jobs, he shaped how Silicon Valley thinks about markets and positioning. His CRUSH methodology — an 11-step process for understanding markets and positioning products for dominance — became the playbook for a generation of technology companies.

What I Built

As Director of Development at Hands-On Technology, I led the team that delivered CRUSH 1.0 and authored POSM (Persistent Object Storage Manager), a custom data layer for Macromedia Director.

Why It Matters

CRUSH proved that a thought leader's intellectual framework could be encoded as interactive software — wisdom made deployable. This became the template for everything that followed.

Guruware · 1994–2024

Software for legendary thinkers

After CRUSH proved the model, I spent three decades building platforms that encode the methodologies of the world's most influential business strategists.

Mach49 · 2018–2024
Growth Incubation at Scale
with Linda Yates
As CTO and Expert-in-Residence at Mach49, the first Silicon Valley incubator for Global 1000 companies building ventures at startup speed. Founded by Linda Yates (author of The Unicorn Within). I lived at the intersection of art of the possible and state of the art.
Venture BuildingEnterprise Innovation
The Unicorn Within by Linda Yates
Strategos · Innovaro LaunchPad
Innovation to the Core
with Peter Skarzynski
Built the innovation management platform for Strategos, where Peter Skarzynski served as CEO. Skarzynski authored Innovation to the Core. The platform, evolving into Innovaro LaunchPad, systematized the “Imagine” methodology for Global 1000 companies.
Innovation PipelineIdea ManagementStrategic Planning
Innovation to the Core by Peter SkarzynskiInnovaro LaunchPad — Imagine Model
Competing for the Future by Gary Hamel
Strategos
Competing for the Future
with Gary Hamel
Gary Hamel, co-founder of Strategos, is widely regarded as the world's most influential business thinker on strategy and innovation. Author of Competing for the Future,Leading the Revolution, and The Future of Management. Built technology platforms that operationalized Hamel's frameworks for strategic intent and core competence at enterprise scale.
Strategic IntentCore CompetenceManagement Innovation
Customer Value, Inc.
Customer Value Analysis
with Dr. Bradley Gale
Developed software tools for Dr. Bradley Gale's customer value methodology. Author ofManaging Customer Value and co-author of The PIMS Principles: Linking Strategy to Performance. Built the Marketing War Room and Value Strategy Toolkitplatforms used by AT&T, Caterpillar, DuPont, John Deere, and Unilever. Gale also served as managing director and CEO of The Strategic Planning Institute and president of PIMS Associates.
Value MappingCompetitive IntelMarket Strategy
Managing Customer Value by Bradley GaleThe PIMS Principles by Buzzell & Gale
Pioneering Work · 1996–1999

Agents before agents were cool

Long before AI agents became the defining paradigm of the 2020s, I was building autonomous software agents in Java — founding one of the first Java shops in the country.

AAAI Multi-Agent Systems 1999AAAI Multi-Agent Systems — 1999
Kinetoscope
Co-Founder & CEO · 1996–1999
One of the first Java Internet application shops in the country. Bootstrapped to fund R&D on a Java agent platform backed by Kleiner Perkins and Norwest. IP sold to PowerMarket.
JAWS
Java Agent Workspace · General Magic
Built JAWS (Java Agent Workspace) for General Magic — the legendary company that pioneered smartphones and intelligent agents. An autonomous agent platform two decades ahead of its time.

From JAWS in the late '90s → Tulli.ai's semantic agents in 2020 → StudioLens's autonomous research loop in 2026. A continuous thread of building systems that act on behalf of humans.

Career

Timeline

30+ years of building, newest first.

2025–Present
Founder
Acceleràre — StudioLens.ai
Active
2019–2021
Chief Technology Officer
Tulli.ai — Semantic AI for Field Service (Shell spinout via Mach49)
2018–2024
CTO & Expert-in-Residence
Mach49 — Growth Incubator for Global 1000
2014–Present
Board of Directors
VIP Software — P&C Insurance Claims Platform
2014–2018
Co-Founder & CTO
Dabbl — Consumer Attention Marketplace
$6.8M Series A
2005–2015
Chief Technology Officer
DEX Imaging — Managed Print Services
11+ PatentsAcquired by Staples
2004–2007
VP of Technology
Solidus Networks (d/b/a PayByTouch) — Biometric Payments
2001–2005
Entrepreneur-in-Residence
SVIC, Palo Alto — ArcSight, CloudShield
ArcSight → HP ($1.6B)
1999–2005
Co-Founder
abeama — Mobile Marketing Platform
1999–2000
Co-Founder & CTO
BrainBuzz.com — Technical Talent Recruiting
1996–1999
Co-Founder & CEO
Kinetoscope — Java Agents / JAWS for General Magic
IP → PowerMarket (KP/Norwest)
1994–1996
Director of Development
Hands-On Technology — CRUSH for Regis McKenna
Kleiner Perkins
1992–1994
Director of Software Development
Image Technologies — Disney, Apple, Nokia, Ford, Time Warner
Acquired by World Color
1991–2005
Software Developer
Teknosys — Help!™ Expert System
Acquired
1990–1991
Software Developer
Hyperactive, Inc — EIS for Victoria's Secret, The Limited
1988–1990
Director of Engineering
Auto-Graph Kitchen Bath Design
Acquired by MASCO (F500)
1981
Self-taught Developer
Apple // Diagnostic Tools — Age 15
Intellectual Property

11+ Patents

Innovations in network discovery, managed print, IoT monitoring, secure transport, and interview technology.

20080309965
Apparatus and method for discovering printers within an enterprise
20150229791
Passive monitoring and reporting of printer-related data on USB cables
20150229543
Passive monitoring and reporting of network content on USB cables
20150227331
Monitoring printer-related data on USB cables
20130254129
Technological solution to interview inefficiency
20130021648
Metering and monitoring print usage at non-network printers
20120194845
Transforming and transporting printer data over the Internet securely
20110228332
Patrol device field installation notification method and system
20110228314
Field metering patrol system for metering and monitoring printers
20080312944
Metering, monitoring and providing real time enterprise printing information
20150227330
Pairing of components of a printer-related data reporting system
Publications & Speaking

Written & spoken

Book
The Human Side of Intranets: Content, Style, and Politics
Koehler, Dupper, Scaff, Reitberger, Paxson — CRC Press, 1998
Journal
Understanding Community Entrepreneurship Building
Journal of Business and Entrepreneurship, Vol. 25, 2014
Column
Interactivity Magazine
Monthly column, ~2 years
Column
Morph's Outpost
Monthly column, ~1.5 years
Keynote
ThinkWrong — 8th Annual Ignite Tampa Bay
Keynote Speaker & Emcee, 2018
Talk
Lessons in the Trenches from a Startup Founder
Rowan University, 2021
Talk
Our Town Series
Interviewed at The Dali Museum, 2012