JW
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Open to contract work · Bay Area / Sonoma / Remote

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A builder and security researcher who came up through the creator economy.

Justin Willhite spent nine years at Twitch (Amazon) leading creator programs for the NFL, the Olympics, and Prime Video. Now he builds production software by directing AI agents, contributes fixes to open-source projects developers rely on, and runs a web studio and creator channels.

San Francisco, CA · justin@itsjustin.me · LinkedIn

How I work

The through-line is ownership. Hand me a problem and the room to own it, and I architect it, direct the build with AI agents, ship it, and stand behind it. That is how the live projects got built and how the open-source fixes get written.

I am not a single-function specialist. I do my best work where one person owns the whole thing: the product call, the code that ships it, and the security review that keeps it standing.

I am open to contract and project work, remote or Northern California. For paid security work, secure code review and vulnerability fixes run through Fiverr.

Story

I started at Twitch in 2016 on the customer-facing side. CRM and customer service tickets during a stretch when the platform was growing faster than its support team. It sounds like the wrong starting point for an influencer marketer, but it gave me a ground-level read on creators and viewers that most marketing leads have to learn from a deck.

By 2019 I'd moved into influencer marketing and stayed there for the next six years. I ran tentpole creator programs for the NFL, the Olympics, and Amazon Prime Video. Multi-region, multi-brand, real budgets, real KPIs. Talent negotiation, content frameworks, paid amplification, performance reporting. The whole stack.

The part of the job I'm proudest of, and the part nobody outside the org knew about, was the tooling. I built AI systems inside Twitch's marketing team before generative AI was on most marketing leaders' radars. A creator pricing chatbot the legal and finance teams ended up using. An automated contract generator that cut errors and turnaround across cross-functional teams. They weren't side projects. They were the infrastructure my team ran on.

I left Amazon in October 2025. The bet was simple: with the AI tooling that existed at that moment, one operator could deliver senior marketing work at a level that used to require a team of five, and could ship their own software while doing it. Six months in, the bet is paying.

Willhite Strategy Group is the consultancy and the platform underneath it. The platform runs a 467K-creator CRM with multi-stage AI scoring, automated outreach, and a client portal. Six integrated subsystems that share data and feed each other. CommQuest, the content agency I started in 2021, is the second income line and proof that the model works across content production too. Brands include Guinness World Records, Vasconia, and PROOF Wallets.

On the side, I ship products. Dealophant is a price-per-unit Amazon shopping engine with a B2B brand marketplace bolted onto it, live since February. My GLP Shot is a privacy-first GLP-1 injection tracker with end-to-end encrypted cloud sync. I have a Chrome extension, an OSINT-y creator scoring engine, a Telegram-bot ops EA, a self-hosted Reddit agent, and a decision-learning service that trains itself on every creator I vet. Forty plus shipped projects.

I direct AI agents to build and secure production software, the way most senior PMs learned to direct engineering teams. That advantage compounds every quarter.

Roles

Founder & Principal Consultant · Willhite Strategy Group
Nov 2025 to Present
Influencer marketing & digital strategy consultancy · TikTok / YouTube / Instagram
  • Lead end-to-end influencer and creator marketing strategy for DTC and ecommerce brands: brand voice, creator selection, content frameworks, paid amplification, and performance reporting.
  • Built a proprietary digital platform from scratch using AI tooling: creator CRM with 467K+ profiles, multi-stage AI scoring (content quality, brand safety, engagement authenticity), automated outreach pipelines, and a token-authenticated client self-service portal.
  • Operate as fractional Head of Influencer Marketing for clients needing senior digital leadership without a full-time hire. Pricing tiers from $500 to $2,500 per month recurring retainer.
  • Own all vendor relationships, tooling decisions, platform roadmap, and commercial model as sole operator.
Founder & CEO · CommQuest
Mar 2021 to Present
Digital content production · Amazon UGC, short-form performance creative, ecommerce video
  • Built recurring-revenue content production agency working with brands including Guinness World Records, Vasconia, and PROOF Wallets.
  • Manage an international team of editors and creators across time zones using Slack, Trello, and Box. Hold a distributed team accountable to brand standards, deadlines, and performance benchmarks.
Senior Influencer Marketing Manager · Twitch (Amazon)
9 years, through 2025
Creator & influencer programs for NFL, Olympics, Amazon Prime Video
  • Ran creator and influencer programs for tier-one global partners: NFL, the Olympics, Amazon Prime Video, and other Amazon-property launches.
  • Led campaign strategy, talent negotiation, content frameworks, paid amplification logic, and KPI reporting across multi-region, multi-brand campaigns.
  • Built early AI tools inside Twitch's marketing organization, workflow automation and content tooling, before generative AI was on most marketing leaders' radars.

40+ shipped projects in six months

Since leaving Amazon I've directed the build of an integrated software platform spanning three VPS servers, two businesses, and a portfolio of consumer products, all without writing code from scratch. I architect, decide, and ship; AI agents do the typing.

Flagship products

Live since Feb 2026

Price-per-unit Amazon shopping engine with 50-page SEO landing network, deal-badge cross-referencing via Levanta, price history, pack-size comparison, and a full B2B brand marketplace (Stripe-subscribed sponsored placement at $2.50 to $6.50 / product / mo). Includes a referral-partner system that swaps Amazon tracking IDs dynamically.

Live Node + React + TS Postgres Stripe Amazon Creators API
Live

Privacy-first GLP-1 / peptide injection tracker. PWA with end-to-end encrypted cloud sync: all crypto runs in the browser. Body-diagram injection mapping, dose heatmap, weight + mood tracking, reconstitution calculator, doctor share links, PDF export. Free tier + $1.99/mo or $19.99/yr Premium.

Live Vanilla JS PWA Web Crypto API Flask + SQLite
Willhite Strategy Group platform
Live · Internal

Six integrated subsystems on a 467K-creator database: Creator Engine (Apify discovery + AI scoring), Campaign Hub, Client Portal, Sales Hub, Marketing Hub, Operations Layer. Closed-loop: a creator declined in the Client Portal teaches the Creator Engine.

6 subsystems 467K creators 32 timers
Meridian
Live · Lead-gen engine

Discovery + triage + AI scoring engine for local web-design leads. Scrapes Google Maps, fetches each candidate site, extracts mobile-responsiveness + tech-stack + last-update signal, then LLM-scores via an OpenRouter model chain (DeepSeek → Llama → Gemini → GPT-4o-mini fallback).

Live Python + Flask OpenRouter

Tools I've shipped to a self-hosted internal portal

All gated behind one auth at tools.willhitestrategy.org:

  • Sports Tracker: UFC + USL League One schedule. Daily Telegram alerts. Web-push (VAPID) browser notifications. PWA for iOS Safari support.
  • Audio Transcriber: drop-in audio to transcript + AI synopsis via Gemini 2.5 Flash.
  • Peptide Calculator: reconstitution math, dosing schedules, injection planner.
  • EXIF Remover, Image Resizer, Video Downloader (self-hosted Cobalt), File Transfer.
  • Tracking Links System: wsgx.cc short-link domain with two link types (campaign vs. resource), priority routing, NocoDB CRUD.
  • Trading Bot, dual-engine sandbox: Freqtrade for crypto + custom Python engine for stocks (Alpaca paper trading, MomentumMeanReversion strategy with ADX regime detection).

AI & agent systems

  • Sam & Hermes: Telegram-bot ops EA + notification dispatcher across the entire infra.
  • Professor: decision-learning service that mirrors every creator vetting approve / decline / skip and trains a baseline ranker, transitioning to LightGBM at ~500 decisions.
  • CommQuest Inbox Agent: hourly Gmail monitor that auto-classifies brand pitches and drafts replies.
  • Sentinel: daily SEO + brand-mention tracking across ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and Gemini for client brands.
  • WSGiQ Chrome Extension v1.2: iframe-bridge extension that overlays the WSG vetting UI onto creator pages on TikTok, IG, and YouTube, with a multi-creator scan grid.
  • Marketing Intelligence Hub, self-hosted okara.ai equivalent: AI Humanizer, Reddit Agent, GEO Score Tracker, SEO Agent.

Infrastructure I run

Three VPS servers, all self-managed. VPS1 is the workhorse (admin, NocoDB, Dealophant, My GLP Shot, Tools Portal, Sports Tracker, Trading Bot). VPS2 hosts the WSG back-office (Refinery, Prowler, Camofox stealth-browser, SearXNG, Karakeep, Meridian, CommQuest Inbox Agent, Mattermost, Planka, Keila, OpnForm, Uptime Kuma). VPS3 is dedicated to client websites on CapRover + Docker Swarm.

I built wsg-infra, a CLI that auto-collects ports, services, and resources from all three VPS every 10 minutes and aggregates to a single JSON, plus a parallel wsg-infra-audit git repo that tracks historical state with a CHANGELOG, so any infra change is forensically reconstructable from git log.

Self-hosted OSS replacing recurring SaaS bills

Slack → Mattermost. Trello → Planka. Mailchimp → Keila. Todoist → Super Productivity. Coolify → CapRover. Google Analytics → Umami. okara.ai → custom Marketing Intelligence Hub. Every recurring bill became a hard look at OSS alternatives.

Stack

Languages
Python, TypeScript, JavaScript, Go (third-party scrapers), Bash
Frameworks
Flask, Express 5, React 18, Astro, Vite, htmx, Drizzle ORM
Data
PostgreSQL + pgvector, SQLite, NocoDB, IndexedDB
AI / LLM
OpenRouter, Anthropic Claude, OpenAI, Gemini, Groq, DeepSeek, LightGBM
Infra
systemd, Docker, CapRover, nginx, Cloudflare, Let's Encrypt, CrowdSec, ModSec v3 + OWASP CRS
Integrations
Stripe, Resend, Twilio, Apify, EnsembleData, Levanta, Amazon Creators API, Umami, Telegram, GitHub OAuth, Sveltia/Decap CMS, PRAW
Marketing tooling
Canva, Adobe Creative Suite, Veo, Slack, Trello, Box, NocoDB
Core marketing skills
Influencer / creator marketing, brand voice, campaign strategy, talent negotiation, paid amplification, ecommerce + Amazon, performance creative, KPI reporting, vendor management

Operating principles

  • Architect integrated systems, not isolated apps. Six WSG subsystems share data, share AI services, and feed each other. A Marketing Hub Reddit hit becomes a Sales Hub deal. A creator declined in Client Portal teaches the Creator Engine. The compounding is the product.
  • Cost discipline through architecture. All AI calls route through one cost-tracking helper. Two-tier (regex → AI fallback) parsers to keep token spend low. Free-tier OpenRouter model chains with paid fallbacks. Self-host before subscribing.
  • Forensic infrastructure hygiene. Live state (wsg-infra) and historical state (wsg-infra-audit) are both queryable. Every infra change updates a CHANGELOG in the same commit.
  • Direction over implementation. I make architecture calls, set constraints, and run agents. I'm responsible for what gets built and why. The code gets typed by AI. I'm the operator.
  • Ship-first, refactor when it hurts. Working systems beat planned ones. I'd rather have the v1 in production teaching me what the v2 should be.

Let's talk

Best way to reach me is email or LinkedIn. I'm fastest on email. If you have a project, a contract engagement in mind, or want to talk through whether what I've built could do something inside your org, let's set up time.

Have a project in mind?

Tell me the project or the problem. I'll tell you whether I'm the fit.