Turn difficult ideas into working systems.

Cool Cat GamesOriginal phone-first entertainment for hospitality venues and events

Originally conceived as a digital jukebox competitor, Cool Cat Games pivoted after the economics of commercial music licensing proved impractical. It now delivers original, phone-based games for bars, restaurants, clubs, and events—drawing on Barton Anderson’s experience developing supporting products associated with AAA video game releases.

Bartenderz InternationalAutomated hospitality training and operating documents

A commercial document-generation platform that converts a guided questionnaire into customized bartender training, policy, checklist, evaluation, and management documents. Bartenderz International gives independent hospitality businesses the kind of structured training and accountability tools larger organizations often have—without requiring owners and managers to build everything from scratch.

RecoverNodeGuarded recovery for self-hosted Linux services

An infrastructure-resilience product that detects failures, evaluates recovery conditions, and performs controlled service-specific remediation without creating unsafe restart loops.

AI‑Accelerated MVP (2–6 weeks)

• Landing + onboarding + core workflow
• Auth, analytics, admin, integrations
• Deploy + monitoring + handoff

Platforms & Web Services Scalable architecture for real products

• API design, data modeling, performance
• Security, reliability, tooling
• UI architecture + design system

Fractional CTO Strategy + leadership + hands‑on delivery

• Architecture review + roadmap
• Hiring support + standards
• AI strategy for product & ops

More than another advisor

Some founders need a senior counterpart who can understand the vision, challenge assumptions, translate direction into daily operating decisions, and take ownership of execution.

I work at that boundary—close enough to the product and technology to make decisions, senior enough to establish standards and guide teams, and hands-on enough to remove the blockers that prevent plans from becoming working systems.

Complementary leadership

The strongest relationship resembles a near-peer partnership: complementary strengths, candid communication, and enough mutual respect that either person could comfortably report to the other if the roles were reversed.

That allows the founder to concentrate on the work only the founder can do while a trusted operating counterpart converts the vision into priorities, decisions, and dependable execution.

Experienced judgment, multiplied by modern tools

• AI-assisted product research, architecture, and implementation
• Coordinated coding-agent workflows for complex development
• Rapid debugging, testing, refactoring, and documentation
• LLM integrations, tool use, RAG, and workflow automation
• Human review for security, maintainability, and operational fit

What you get

• Shorter development cycles without surrendering technical control
• More iterations → better UX and conversion
• Better documentation and faster onboarding
• A system you can actually run long-term

EA Sports (NASCAR)3D “Locker” skin preview/approval + upload workflow

• What it enabled: players could understand, preview, approve, and upload a 3D skin into the EA Locker for in‑game use.
• What I owned: end‑to‑end UI/UX + engineering, upload pipeline, and graphics-file manipulation to meet in‑game requirements.
• Constraint: first‑of‑its‑kind system with a hard 6‑month delivery window.
• Stack: ActionScript; custom 3D display interface (built by me) + common 3D interface integration.
• Leadership: EA had no established web practice at the time . I authored their first internal web development guide (download below) to standardize the lifecycle (analysis → launch → specification → design → development → testing → release), QA test plans, cross‑browser/load/stress/scalability testing, and technical documentation.

EA Sports (NCAA Football)“Create‑a‑Team” prototype

• What it enabled: users could create a full team experience (team, school, players, etc.) via the web, and then play against others, in game.
• Timeline: 4 months to prototype and hand off to another team for completion.
• What I owned: product flow + UX + engineering implementation.
• Stack: ActionScript.

Kizzangrapid mobile game delivery + leadership through change

• Goal: deliver a mobile game on aggressive timelines (not just as an individual contributor, but as a multiplier for the team).
• Collaboration: partnered tightly with the graphics team, CTO, and CEO to keep scope, quality, and deadlines aligned.
• Leadership: helped stabilize delivery and team momentum when the CTO departed.
• Stack: ActionScript.

RhythmhoüzA purpose-built professional network for the music industry

• The opportunity: general social networks did not reflect the interconnected professional ecosystem behind recorded music, live performance, touring, promotion, production, education, manufacturing, and music-industry services.
• What I created: a full-stack platform connecting individual professionals, artists and bands, venues, studios, labels, promoters, manufacturers, music schools, merchants, charities, and other industry participants.
• Platform capabilities: role-specific profiles, artist and band pages, electronic press kits, media management, professional connections, opportunity listings, messaging, search and discovery, metrics, administration, subscriptions, and controlled profile visibility.
• Public and private architecture: authenticated member experiences were separated from dynamically rendered public-facing pages designed for discovery and search indexing.
• Engineering context: I hand-coded and engineered the platform in 2020, before modern AI coding agents became part of my development workflow.
• What it demonstrates: product strategy, complex data modeling, role-based experiences, server-rendered applications, community systems, media workflows, privacy controls, and network-effect product design.

M&M’s / Marsbranded app reskin for marketing campaign

• Goal: reskin the NASCAR 3D application I created in ActionScript to reflect M&M’s campaign branding using provided assets.
• Constraint: planned 2‑month schedule.
• Delivery: completed in ~1 month without sacrificing polish or brand fidelity.
• Stack: ActionScript; custom 3D display interface built by me, with common 3D interface integration.

Cool Cat GamesA strategic pivot from digital jukebox to original venue gaming

• Origin: Cool Cat Games began as a digital jukebox intended to compete with established venue-entertainment platforms. After analyzing the substantial costs and restrictions of commercial music licensing, I chose not to force an unsustainable model.
• The pivot: I redirected the platform toward interactive games for bars, restaurants, clubs, and events, where there was greater creative flexibility and a more practical path to commercialization.
• What makes it different: the games are not conventional bar-game adaptations. They draw on my experience developing supporting products associated with AAA video game releases and are designed around the shared energy of a live venue.
• How it works: guests participate from their phones, venue televisions become part of the experience, and staff controls coordinate the room-wide game.
• What I built: product strategy, game concepts, user experience, full-stack software, licensing controls, venue operations, and cloud-plus-local deployment workflows.
• Development approach: I used agentic AI to accelerate research, implementation, testing, debugging, and documentation while retaining direct control over architecture, product judgment, and production quality.
• Link: coolcatjuke.com