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Misfits & Machines | Accelerate Bold Ventures

Misfits & Machines

MissionValuesTeamSister AgencyBlogContact

MissionValuesTeamSister AgencyBlogContact

# Hello Fellow Misfit.

We incubate and accelerate bold ventures through
challenger thinking and AI tinkering.

Message a Misfit

# Our Mission

To liberate contrarian ideas
from the tyranny of reason.

# Strategy

Our misfitery focuses on the advancement of the four Ps.

01

## Product

We build brain-bending SaaS ideas from ideation to implementation.

02

## Partnership

We have no interest in being angel investors, simply investing our dollars and stepping aside. Instead, we are guardian angels helping fellow misfit marketers to boldly reimagine their product innovation through smashable branding and the power of television.

03

## Proof

Misfits can be nerds too. We love data. Whether we're dreaming up products from scratch, or partnering on ideas, we test, validate, scale… or go back and pound our head on the drawing board.

04

## Prestidigitation

Magic through mayhem. We leave room for wonder and ponder. Here, serendipity will be given a permission slip to trump strategy, allowing the freedom to traverse bunny holes of strange misadventures in search of the supernatural.

# Values

## Be Unreasonable

Sound logic and reasoning are important. It also keeps people from building pyramids and rocket ships. We begin every journey being unreasonable. Setting goals of audacious undertakings. There will be plenty of time for the pundits to puke on your idea.

## Solve Big Problems

There's only so much time in a day. And there's no shortage of shiny problems to solve, and clever ways to solve them. We prioritize big problems in need of 10x solutions.

## Wandering is Still Work

Gantt charts can't capture the uncharted exploration needed to find the next big idea. Dedicated time to step outside the lines of our daily to-dos isn't a luxury, it's an expectation.

## Fail Fantastically

Failing fuels winning. You don't get one without the other. It's going to take a full tank of failure to rocket past the mundane.

## Embrace Unfair Advantages

Our sister agency, Marketing Architects, gives us an unfair advantage of capital, brainpower and technology. Our symbiotic relationship gives us the muscle needed to dig wide moats around our ideas, creating categories of one.

# Meet the Misfits

The founding members definitely fit.

⇠

⇢

Missy Fit

Whirlwind of Wires and Wonder

Meet Missy Fit, the whimsical whirlwind of wires and wonder at Misfits & Machines. Don't let her robotic frame fool you; Missy is the muse of mayhem, brewing up brainstorming storms with her circuit-savvy wit and digital charm. She's the spark in every strategy session, the giggle in the gears, turning every plan on its head with her out-of-the-box (and into-the-cloud) thinking. Her infectious energy is magnetic, drawing in ideas and inspiration from every corner of the cosmos. Missy doesn't just process data; she infuses it with imagination, making every project not just a task, but a tale of tech and tenacity. She's not just a bot; she's the beat of Misfits & Machines, pulsing with potential and playfulness in every byte.

Chuck Hengel

Founder and Chairman

Say hello to Chuck. Serial entrepreneur. Nationally ranked triathlete. Lover of Beagles. He founded one of the largest privately held TV agencies in the country while simultaneously reeling in prize-winning lunkers, aka bass, in tournaments across the Midwest. Oh, and he's also a farmer. Yep, Chuck's a misfit. A statistician's brain with a creative's heart all wrapped up in a 6 foot 3 inch frame. While Chuck is still the Executive Chairman of Marketing Architects, the agency he founded back in 1997, his main focus today is being the mastermind of Misfits & Machines.

Rob DeMars

Chief Product Architect

This is Rob. Rob knew he was a misfit in high school when he thought performing magic tricks in gym class would compensate for his inability to throw a spiral. Given the number of wedgies he received in the locker room, clearly pulling a half-dollar out of a linebacker's nose does not impress. Forgoing a career performing at backyard birthday parties, Rob chose instead to focus his hocus-pocus on the world of advertising, ultimately leading the creative and strategy offering at Marketing Architects. Today, Rob has joined Chuck as head of mischief at Misfits & Machines. While Rob loves getting back to his misfit roots, Chuck absolutely refuses to let him pull a coin out of his nose.

Jordan Mauer

SVP Strategic Partnerships

It takes a special kind of misfit to wear a Chuck E. Cheese costume for your first job. It takes an even bigger misfit to actually brag about it. That's Jordan. While Jordan may have hung up his rodent costume, he continues to be a builder of better mouse traps for darn near every type of sector. He's worked at the helm of massive creative, strategic and analytic initiatives for the likes of US Bank, Activision, NASCAR, and General Mills, to name just a few. But there will always be a soft spot for his very first gig. Which is why he still has the costume. Seriously. He still has it. And wears it. Which is why it was a no-brainer for us to want him on the team.

John Ryan Cottam

Director Engineering

He skis mountains. He codes python. He shoots documentaries. In Nepal. He wrestles brain-bending AI initiatives to the mat until they scream Uncle. He doesn't just have one first name. He has two. He's "John Ryan." Who said a misfit can't be cool? John Ryan joins us from a little shop called Amazon where he was a Solution Architect specializing in their ad tech platforms. His vast experience in ones and zeros is filled with all kinds of fancy acronyms like SaaS, JAMstack, REST, and APIs. Yup, John Ryan is a full-on nerd and a cool dude at the same time. Which makes him a misfit. In a land of machines.

Jonathan Elfreich

Head AI Architect

Jonathan's path from fencing prodigy to AI guru is nothing short of an epic journey. A die-hard Star Trek fan and former economics instructor, he founded and sold a successful marketing start-up before beaming himself up to Omnicom. There, he dazzled brands like Pepsi and the Army with his big data brain. In 2022, he pioneered the use of generative AI across all Omnicom agencies. At Misfits & Machines, Jonathan points his warp-speed AI know-how at brave new frontiers of product innovation. Whether he's conquering machine vision or quoting Captain Picard, Jonathan brings both brilliance and full-on geek to all that he touches. Engage!

Josh Wilson

Director AI Audio

Ever wonder what it sounds like when a Pokémon made of Oreos zaps your taste buds? Josh doesn't just wonder—he makes it happen. With over a decade orchestrating audio for heavyweights like Netflix, Disney, and Warner Bros, he's the misfit maestro behind thousands of unforgettable soundscapes. When not conjuring audio, Josh, along with his wife and son, are busy providing a home for adopted animals. A misfit providing a haven for fellow furry misfits? Now that sounds sweet.

Seth Woodall

Director AI Visual Arts

Seth's journey began with a VHS camera and a knack for turning goofy ideas into cinematic spellcraft. Fast forward 15+ years, and he's now the mastermind of motion design and editing, blending the weird with the wonderful. Seth recently gained international attention when he unlocked the power of AI generative video with projects that are as mind-bending as they are mesmerizing. When Seth's not warping pixels, you'll find him in a dim theater, popcorn in hand, absorbing the magic that fuels his misfit mayhem.

Nick Bailey

Director GIS and Analytics

Nick's (Jack) journey is all about remixing the unexpected. From life as a rap artist to reshaping how data is seen through maps, he's constantly finding new ways to fuse the creative with the analytical. Blending business intelligence, AI, and GIS, Nick doesn't just help companies analyze data—he helps them reimagine it. Having worked with major brands, he uncovers hidden patterns and connections that others overlook. Whether he's laying down beats or charting new data landscapes, Nick's all about turning raw ideas into something original and full of rhythm.

Caleb DeLeeuw

Prompt Engineer

From Oregon's Silicon Forest to a regenerative farm near Seattle, Caleb has spent over a decade uncovering the hidden logic of intelligence—human, artificial, and sometimes even nuclear fusion. A true Open-Sourceror, he proves machine learning can be both powerful and accessible, a spellbook built one prompt and line of Python at a time. At Misfits & Machines, he engineers prompts, tames large language model agents, and keeps the company's open-source tools brimming with arcane energy. When not weaving digital magic with the team, you can find him carving through fresh powder on the mountain, sparring with Eskrima sticks, or deciphering the secrets of mechanistic interpretability. A misfit among machines, a machine among misfits, casting spells in both worlds.

Isaiah Britto

Full Stack Developer

Some misfits build software. Others teach dance. Isaiah? He does both. A backend wizard who kicked off his career at IBM, he's got a knack for crafting scalable, high-performance systems that make products hum. He speaks in APIs, thinks in Kafka topics, and dreams in perfectly optimized data structures. But don't let the tech talk fool you—this guy's got rhythm. A Country Swing aficionado, who has turned his love for dance into a business, teaching classes in Nashville and across the U.S. Whether he's writing code or spinning and dipping his way around, Isaiah keeps things moving with precision and style. A coder with a cowboy twist? Now that's a misfit worth knowing.

Noah Moss

Technical Project Manager

Noah Moss is a man of flow—on the slopes, behind the bar, and deep in the world of tech. He's led dazzlingly effective teams through the high-speed turns of emerging technologies, most notably in the wonderfully weird world of Warner Bros' Neurolabs. Equal parts disciplined and daring, he's a startup-forged leader with a love for fast environments, funky gadgets, and family dinners. At Misfits & Machines, he's our project pilot, steering ideas safely into orbit with a steady hand and a twinkle of mischief.

Andrew Aldrich

Front End Developer

Meet our off-road-coding, concert-loving, race car-building tech whisperer from Fort Collins. A seasoned React Native engineer since 2017, he's just as comfortable debugging a mobile app as he is under the hood of a turbocharged beast. His last pit stop? Steering mobile tech at Enterprise Rent-A-Car as a senior mobile engineer. When he's not chasing the latest in AI or grinding through side projects, he's hammering out chords on the piano—an instrument he's known since kindergarten. Oh, and did we mention he once marched a tuba? The man's a one-man band of brainy mischief.

Jon Vargas

Senior Product Designer

It takes a special kind of misfit to build an AR headset from scratch, win a gaming tournament, and then decide the real flex is a camper van that runs on AI and ambition. Meet Jon. A product design veteran with 10+ years of bending reality—most recently redesigning logistics systems at Unisys with AI and machine learning. He's won design awards, worked with brands like Pepsi and Volvo, and still finds time to geek out over storytelling in anime and film. Minimalist. Maximalist thinker. His van has mood lighting. And opinions. And probably better UX than your last app.

Alex Berkowitz

Front End Developer

Alex builds worlds—sometimes in CAD, sometimes in D&D, sometimes on the fretboard of a well-worn guitar. With a background in animation, graphic design, and UI, he’s danced between pixels and prototypes, fusing form with function in everything from rings to razor-edged tools. A proud maker fluent in 3D printing and CNC sorcery, Alex doesn’t just design—he manifests. He lives with his equally-named better half, a cat of mystery, and a head full of campaigns and quests. Level 20 misfit. Constitution modifier: +3.

# Sister Agency

Being a twisted sister has its benefits.

Our sister agency, Marketing Architects, is an All-Inclusive TV agency that rebuilt the traditional agency model to help brands drive profitable growth. Founded in Minneapolis, Marketing Architects has spent over 25 years building homegrown technology to solve TV's pricing, measurement and scale challenges.

# Message a Misfit

If you're a fellow Misfit on a mission, let's connect.

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601 Carlson Parkway, Suite 110
Minneapolis, MN 55305

952-449-2500