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About
Founder-operator and transformation specialist with 25+ years building technology products across startups, enterprises, and critical infrastructure. Founded and exited a SaaS company serving regulated industries to a global financial institution, scaling from solo founder to 30-person team with seven-figure recurring revenue.
Apart from working for NATO. Hobbies currently include building AI products including Stompy.ai, an MCP-based memory system that gives AI assistants persistent project memory across sessions and devices, and Dollar.flights, an AI-assisted flight deals service. Published thinking on Truth Engines—machine-centric fact verification protocols designed to address AI hallucination at scale. Research on semantic classification (Delta Evaluation Architecture) emerged directly from Stompy.ai development and is being prepared for ICMCIS 2026.
Led large-scale technology transformations in government and defense, including modernizing IT portfolios at the Finnish Defence Forces (€40M+ in identified savings, €5M+ annual operational savings) and designing coalition medical data systems at NATO NCI Agency spanning 32 nations. Awarded CWIX 2024 Golden Interoperability Hero Medal for technical contributions to NATO exercises.
Board and advisory value:
> Founder perspective: Built, scaled, and sold technology companies; understand the full lifecycle from product-market fit to exit
> Operational depth: Led organizations from 2 to 400+ people across startups, agencies, and government institutions
> AI/Data expertise: Hands-on experience building production AI systems including semantic search, RAG pipelines, MCP servers, and verification architectures
> Transformation track record: Turned around struggling technology organizations and delivered complex multi-stakeholder programs
> Cross-domain pattern recognition: Moved between startup, enterprise, military, and consumer sectors; identify patterns that transfer across contexts
Former member of Toptal%27s top 3% fractional CTO/CPO network (2020-2024). EMBA from Stockholm School of Economics (2006). Based in The Hague, Netherlands; open to international board and advisory roles. Specialisation – Project Rescues: https://medium.com/@mrsandelin/the-murderer-is-always-in-the-room-notes-from-thirty-years-of-project-autopsies-26d5e1fa5d35
Apart from working for NATO. Hobbies currently include building AI products including Stompy.ai, an MCP-based memory system that gives AI assistants persistent project memory across sessions and devices, and Dollar.flights, an AI-assisted flight deals service. Published thinking on Truth Engines—machine-centric fact verification protocols designed to address AI hallucination at scale. Research on semantic classification (Delta Evaluation Architecture) emerged directly from Stompy.ai development and is being prepared for ICMCIS 2026.
Led large-scale technology transformations in government and defense, including modernizing IT portfolios at the Finnish Defence Forces (€40M+ in identified savings, €5M+ annual operational savings) and designing coalition medical data systems at NATO NCI Agency spanning 32 nations. Awarded CWIX 2024 Golden Interoperability Hero Medal for technical contributions to NATO exercises.
Board and advisory value:
> Founder perspective: Built, scaled, and sold technology companies; understand the full lifecycle from product-market fit to exit
> Operational depth: Led organizations from 2 to 400+ people across startups, agencies, and government institutions
> AI/Data expertise: Hands-on experience building production AI systems including semantic search, RAG pipelines, MCP servers, and verification architectures
> Transformation track record: Turned around struggling technology organizations and delivered complex multi-stakeholder programs
> Cross-domain pattern recognition: Moved between startup, enterprise, military, and consumer sectors; identify patterns that transfer across contexts
Former member of Toptal%27s top 3% fractional CTO/CPO network (2020-2024). EMBA from Stockholm School of Economics (2006). Based in The Hague, Netherlands; open to international board and advisory roles. Specialisation – Project Rescues: https://medium.com/@mrsandelin/the-murderer-is-always-in-the-room-notes-from-thirty-years-of-project-autopsies-26d5e1fa5d35
Advisory experience
Markus Sandelin is an advisor and board member based in Netherlands, specialising in Defense and Space. They have advisor or board member experience with Dollar.flights (Founder, Current), Stompy.ai (Founder, Current) and Defense Technology Startup (Confidential). They speak English, Finnish and French. They are open to advisory board and board director opportunities and are available for introductions through Boardio.
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