Skip to content
Keith McAleer

Keith McAleer · San Francisco

Marketing systems and product explorer

Currently exploring agentic marketing operating systems and orchestration.

A window into things I've built: products, platforms, talks and games. See the work

  • Hey Neko, delegating a build to Claude Code
  • The Innovation Collider talk
  • BEGIN relaunch homepage
  • Rainy Seoul Convenience, a pixel-art game
  • Northstar, a simulated investing dashboard
  • Dune Blade, a 3D browser game
  • StartupOS portfolio command center
  • ROTZONE, a top-down survival game
  • Hey Neko capability controls
  • Startup Marketing in the AI Era talk
  • Tiny Brand Studio, a brand-checked flyer editor
  • Rune Rush, built through Neko
  • Venti, an agentic marketing workspace in development
  • BEGIN resource directory
  • Dune Blade title screen
  • Northstar markets view
  • Hey Neko terminal notes
  • Kkachi, a Korean speaking flashcard app
  • ChipForm, a chiptune loop generator
  • Rainy Seoul, a pixel-art street
  • Dune Blade boss encounter

How the work connects

Most marketing problems turn out to be system problems.

The same loop runs through a campaign, a university platform and a desktop agent. What has changed is how much of it I can now build myself.

  1. 01

    Understand the problem

    Who is this for, and what are they actually trying to get done?

    See: Narrow ICPs

  2. 02

    Tell the story

    Positioning and narrative clear enough to survive being retold.

    See: Marketing in the AI era

  3. 03

    Build the system

    The platform, CRM, analytics or agent that gets the story to the people it's for.

    See: BEGIN

  4. 04

    Measure adoption

    Did people use it? Did it pay back? Then do the next loop.

AI and product run underneath every stage: as a research tool, as a way to prototype the idea, and more and more as the thing being built.

Selected work

A shipped AI product, an agentic system and a platform.

Three projects, each showing a different part of the same job.

Neko chat: a weather answer, then a request to build a Focus Timer app delegated to Claude Code, followed by a completion report with npm test and npm run build checks.
Neko Brain settings: avatar, voice, language, and separate model choices for chat and for coding, plus work hours and custom instructions.

01 · Desktop AI agent

Hey Neko

Shipped · free beta for Windows and macOS

One voice in front of the AI systems you already use.

A voice-first desktop assistant and orchestrator. Neko answers out loud, keeps context for each project and client, runs local apps, and hands coding work to Claude Code or Codex in the background, inside safety boundaries enforced in code.

  • Shipped as a free beta for Windows and macOS (Apple Silicon)
  • 500+ automated tests
  • About 22,000 lines of Python
Ventiin development

Agents

  • EurusStrategy lead
  • AuraBrand
  • ZephyrusEmail campaigns
  • AeolusMarketing loop & leads
  • BoreasContacts
  • NotusPages & forms
  • AellaVideo

Tools by area

  • Campaigns9
  • Brand6
  • Contacts6
  • Forms & pages6
  • Video5
  • Strategy & reports5
  • Leads4
  • Agent hand-offs4
  • Lists & utilities11
Diagram of the system as built so far, from its agent and tool registry. Not a product screenshot.

02 · Agentic marketing workspace

Venti

In development · not yet deployed

Making it easy for a whole community to contribute to its own marketing.

A multi-agent workspace that combines structured contribution forms, reusable brand context and agentic workflows. Faculty, staff and students can hand over stories and campaign inputs with little effort, and a small marketing team can turn them into useful content.

  • In development, not yet deployed
  • 7 agents and 50+ tools implemented so far
  • HubSpot integration that reads contacts and writes back lead scores
Relaunched BEGIN homepage: 'Your gateway to the Berkeley innovation ecosystem', with buttons to explore the roadmap or browse all resources and a link to ask BearGPT, beside a photo of the Campanile and the Bay.

03 · Discovery platform

BEGIN: Berkeley Gateway to Innovation

Live · relaunch in preview

Turning institutional complexity into a navigable product.

A structured discovery layer across 155 Berkeley entrepreneurship and innovation resources, organized by stage, audience and category. A student, researcher or founder can find where to go next without first decoding the university.

  • Live at begin.berkeley.edu, with the relaunch in preview
  • 155 programs and resources organized in one structure
  • UC Berkeley's first AI-guided entrepreneurship resource chatbot

Things I build

Building is how I think.

Independent products and experiments, mostly built with AI coding agents. Some are tools I use every day. Some exist to find out what's possible.

  • Kkachi

    iOS app · awaiting App Store release

    A Korean flashcard app you answer out loud. On-device speech recognition grades each answer, and spaced repetition brings missed cards back. 55 decks run from A1 to B1.

  • StartupOS

    Live · private workspace

    A workspace where founders grade hypotheses, experiments and decisions on an explicit evidence ladder. The AI assistant proposes structured changes that the founder has to approve.

  • Rune Rush and small games

    Experiments

    Browser games built as experiments in game feel and in what AI agents can carry end to end. Rune Rush, a first-person wizard arena with boss waves and controller support, was built through Neko.

  • Expi Labs

    Live

    A small app studio site with the publishing, policy and support pages that apps in the stores require. It publishes Kkachi.

Ideas I'm working through

Marketing in the AI era.

Two talks from October 2026. The short version: AI made average content free, so point of view, proof and structure matter more than ever.

All the arguments
Title slide of The Innovation Collider: white headline on deep navy with colliding particle streaks, subtitled 'Berkeley's innovation ecosystem + marketing in the AI era'.

3 October 2026 · BCS AI + Recruiting Summit

The Innovation Collider

Berkeley's innovation ecosystem, then six popular claims about marketing in the AI era, each tested against current research and given a verdict.

  • AI made average free. Average is now worthless.
  • Every AI that recommends you has read your website.
  • You're not behind on agents. You might be behind on positioning.
Read the arguments
Title slide of Startup Marketing in the AI Era: white headline on deep navy with particle streaks, subtitled 'Positioning · Story · Brand · When to invest · Mistakes'.

October 2026 · UDAX Berkeley Accelerator, Cohort 2

Startup Marketing in the AI Era

A practical framework for founders: positioning, story, brand, when to invest in marketing, and the mistakes early-stage teams make most often.

  • Sell the hole, not the drill.
  • Generic is free now. A point of view isn't.
  • A crowd you paid for isn't product-market fit.
Read the arguments

About

Building has become part of how I lead.

I started in communications, and over fifteen years I kept moving underneath the work: websites, then analytics, CRM, UX, automation, software, and now AI agents. Each time, the most useful answer to a marketing problem was a better system, so I learned to build them.

Berkeley's entrepreneurship center gave me founders, engineers and faculty to learn from, a federated organization to make sense of, and permission to experiment. I still write, design, analyze and ship.

Chancellor's Outstanding Staff Award, UC Berkeley, 2022.

More about how I work

Glad to compare notes on AI, product and growth.

I'm based in San Francisco. The easiest way to reach me is email or LinkedIn.