/About
William Nichols
Founder & Principal Engineer — Burnwire
Thirty years of shipping software. Designer who codes. Engineer who designs. The kind of person who gets restless in meetings because the thing they're discussing could already be built by the time the meeting ends.
William has spent three decades building software — from teaching himself HTML as a Marine Corps data systems sergeant in 1993, to shipping his first web apps in '96, to building applications for city government, launching a job platform that was acquired in under 18 months, and advising Fortune-level enterprises on architecture and security. He went independent in 2010 and never looked back — running an end-to-end design and development practice that routinely outpaced shops ten times its size.
Burnwire is the answer to everything he saw broken. One builder with thirty years of context, AI-native tools that compress mechanical work to near-zero, and a process designed around outcomes instead of billable hours. The result: complete products — brand, application, infrastructure, documentation — shipped in weeks at a fraction of what a traditional agency charges.
William believes the best software comes from people who can hold the entire product in their head — from the hex code in the brand palette to the environment variable in production. No handoffs. No telephone game between designer and developer. Just one person who gives a damn, building the thing right.
30 years of building things that ship
Enlisted in the United States Marine Corps. Assigned to data systems — and started teaching himself HTML. The discipline, precision, and bias toward action that the Corps instills never left.
Shipped his first web applications while still in uniform — an online job board and a full e-commerce site. Before most companies had a website, he was already building products.
Went full-time into web development. Spent five years building applications for local city government — portals, forms, citizen-facing tools. Learned that great software serves people who never think about the technology behind it.
Launched LAJobHunter.com — a job search platform that gained traction fast enough to be privately acquired within its first 18 months. First taste of building something from zero to exit.
Moved into enterprise consulting. Spent four years advising Fortune-level companies on enterprise architecture, application development, and application security. Learned how large organizations build — and why they build so slowly.
Went independent. Took on end-to-end design, development, and architecture engagements across industries. Full-stack in the truest sense: brand, frontend, backend, infrastructure, delivery.
Adopted AI-native development workflows and realized the leverage wasn't incremental — it was a category shift. One builder with thirty years of context and AI-native tools could outpace a team of ten.
Launched Burnwire. Formalized the process. Complete products — brand, application, infrastructure, documentation — shipped in weeks at a fraction of what traditional agencies charge. The model, rebuilt from scratch.
Principles, not platitudes
Speed is a feature, not a shortcut.
Moving fast doesn't mean moving sloppy. It means eliminating the meetings, handoffs, approval chains, and process theater that slow traditional agencies to a crawl. When one person holds the full context — design, code, infrastructure — decisions happen in seconds, not sprints.
Small businesses deserve big-company quality.
A startup with a $15K budget deserves the same craft, security, and engineering rigor as an enterprise with $500K. The difference should be scope, not quality. Burnwire exists to close that gap.
You should own everything.
No vendor lock-in. No proprietary frameworks. No hostage situations. When a Burnwire engagement ends, you walk away with the code, the brand, the docs, the infrastructure credentials, and a roadmap. If you never call us again, you're still set.
AI changes who can build, not what gets built.
AI doesn't replace taste, strategy, or experience. It replaces the mechanical hours between having an idea and seeing it run. Thirty years of knowing what to build, plus AI-native tools that compress the how — that's the Burnwire model.
Show the work.
No case studies with blurred screenshots and vague testimonials. Every Burnwire project is live, at a real URL, doing real things. If we built it, you can go look at it right now.
Why one builder beats a team
A designer creates mockups. Hands them to a developer who interprets them. The developer writes code that a QA person tests. A project manager coordinates everyone. An account manager talks to the client. Five people, five salaries, five schedules to align.
The client pays for all of that coordination overhead. The 6-month timeline isn't because the work takes 6 months — it's because the communication about the work takes 6 months.
One person designs, codes, deploys, and documents. The design decision and the code commit happen in the same hour. There is no gap between intent and implementation because the same brain holds both.
AI-native workflows handle the mechanical labor — the boilerplate, the repetition, the scaffolding. What's left is the judgment: what to build, how it should feel, which tradeoffs matter. Thirty years of judgment, applied at AI speed.
"I've watched $200K agency engagements deliver less than what one focused builder ships in a month. Burnwire exists because small and medium businesses deserve the same quality at a fraction of the cost — and because the technology finally makes that possible."
— William Nichols
Every engagement includes
Brand Identity
Logo, color system, typography, design guidelines. Not an afterthought — a first-class deliverable.
Full-Stack Application
Frontend, backend, database, API. Production-grade code, not a prototype you have to rebuild.
Production Deployment
Hosting, DNS, SSL, CI/CD, monitoring. Deployed and running, not a zip file in your inbox.
Complete Documentation
Architecture docs, operational runbook, API specs. Your next developer can hit the ground running.
30-Day Warranty
Anything we shipped that breaks, we fix. No charge. No negotiation. It's on us.
v2 Roadmap
Prioritized feature recommendations for what comes next. You're not left wondering where to go.
Let's build
something real.
No pitch deck required. Just tell me what you're building and I'll tell you honestly whether Burnwire is the right fit.