Daniel Bondurant

About Daniel Bondurant

Hands-on CTO for media, streaming, and AI-native platforms. I build — not just advise. I\'m the kind of CTO who still writes architecture documents, reviews code, and ships production systems. At Napster, I led the platform turnaround and shipped production AI: vector-based music search, and PlaylistGPT — the first ChatGPT integration by any music streaming service (covered in Forbes, Digital Music News, Music Ally, and others). Before Napster, I was technical co-founder of Wiredrive and grew it into the market-standard SaaS platform for creative review across advertising, television, and motion picture — 2,500+ enterprise clients, 95% retention, 18 years of operation. WHAT I DO - Platform turnarounds and cloud modernization (Napster: 70% OpEx reduction, GCP migration)- Production AI — LLM-powered features (PlaylistGPT), vector search (MongoDB Atlas Vector Search), embeddings, and recommendation systems - Audio and video streaming architecture for global subscriber bases - Engineering organization design — scaling teams through a VP of Engineering and Technical Project Managers - Real-time media distribution (CBS, MTV, VH1 reality programming via IOWA Interactive)- Technical due diligence, post-merger integration, and PE value creation WHERE I\'VE OPERATED - Napster — CTO, 2023–present (turnaround + Napster AI wind-down)- Wiredrive — Technical Co-founder & CTO, - Blockdaemon — CTO, 2018–2020 (institutional blockchain,$100M assets)- Current fractional engagements: FanFly, Versai Labs - Prior fractional and advisory: OneOf, Markaaz, E100 Networks WHO I WORK WITH Media, streaming, and music companies. Founders building AI-native platforms. PE portfolios with technical debt blocking the next valuation step. CEOs who need a hands-on technologist for the next 6–18 months, not a deck-writer. If you\'re building in audio, video, broadcast, or AI search and need an operator who\'s done it for 25 years — let\'s talk.

Experience

1. Chief Technology Officer Cloud Transformation Production Ai (Playlistgpt Vector Search)

   Napster Music

   Feb 2023 — Present · Austin, TX, US

   CTO for the Napster music streaming platform. Led the turnaround of Rhapsody/Napster Music — modernizing the stack, compressing costs, and bringing the platform to near operational break-even, then continued through the 2025 Infinite Reality acquisition and rebrand to Napster AI. Now leading the wind-down of the Napster Music product. Direct a team across Engineering, Product, and DevOps on a $10M operational budget- Migrated the entire platform from on-premise data centers to GCP, cutting operating costs 70%- Shipped PlaylistGPT — the first ChatGPT integration by a music streaming service (Forbes, Digital Music News, Music Ally). Started on OpenAI; re-architected onto Gemini for generation, Nano Banana (Gemini) for cover art, and MongoDB Atlas Vector Search for semantic retrieval, integrated with Napster\'s existing recommendation engine- Built vector-based AI music search for personalized discovery across the catalog- Reduced customer churn to an industry-leading 2% through stability and streaming-quality work- Reduced outsourced development 75%, consolidating engineering in-house with rigorous vendor governance- Leading the post-acquisition wind-down: unwinding vendor contracts and eliminating operating costs while maintaining service through end-of-life.

Education

• Berklee College of Music

  Music Production and Engineering, Music Synthesis

  1994 — 1996

• UC San Diego

  BA, Applied Mathematics

Skills

• Nginx
• Imagemagick
• Mysql
• Start-Ups
• Devops
• Pingdom
• Agile Methodologies
• Management
• Team Building
• Agile
• Video Compression
• Ffmpeg
• Scalable Web Applications
• Strategic Partnerships
• Lamp
• Web Development
• Linux
• Software Development
• Scrum
• Apache
• Saas
• Mvc
• Gomez
• Php
• Software as a Service (Saas)
• Bit.ly
• Cross-Functional Team Leadership
• Networking
• Cloud Computing
• Splunk