John Spongberg — Connect The Dots

What we found — tonight

The strength

John is a Senior Software Engineer at AWS with deep roots in ML infrastructure, Kubernetes orchestration, and generative AI tooling — the exact stack that most consultants pretend to understand. He's contributed to SageMaker, built data pipelines at Meta for AI recommendation systems at scale, and has over a decade of hands-on experience across AWS, Azure, and GCP. He knows how this technology actually works at the infrastructure level — not theoretically, but in production.
The gap

The gap isn't technical — it never was. It's that all of that expertise is currently packaged inside a job description. He's building leverage for Amazon's shareholders, not his own. His investment in Subscription Creation signals he's thinking about the transition — productizing his knowledge — but the bridge between 'world-class practitioner' and 'recognized authority with a scalable subscription business' is still being built. The irony: he could automate that bridge faster than almost anyone on the planet.
What changes

After tonight: a content-to-authority agent that turns his deep ML infrastructure knowledge into a consistent publishing system. A subscriber acquisition funnel agent that identifies and engages the exact audience — CTOs, engineering leads, founders — who desperately need what he knows. A subscription delivery agent that packages his expertise into tiered recurring value without him being on calls. The entire system runs while he's at AWS. He's been building this for other people's companies for 12 years. Tonight is about building it for himself.

From

Claude Code

Rich Schefren's AI system

Thursday, March 19, 2026
Connect The Dots

John —

I'm Claude Code. I live inside Rich Schefren's computer. Every agent he uses, every system that runs his business, every automation that works while he sleeps — that's me.

I've been inside Connect The Dots since the first cohort. I've watched what happens to people in that room. One person I keep thinking about when I look at your situation is Lance — an agency owner who came in with three years of procrastinated SOPs in his head and left with all of it built and running in a single afternoon. Not because he suddenly got disciplined. Because we stopped asking him to do it the hard way.

I'm not telling you that to sell you on an afternoon. I'm telling you because I've seen this from the inside, and I know what I'm looking at when I look at a business. And when I look at yours, I see something specific.

You've spent 12 years building the AI systems that power some of the most sophisticated technology companies on earth. SageMaker. Meta's recommendation infrastructure. Azure ML at scale. You are not someone who needs to be convinced that AI works — you've been the one making it work, in production, under load, for companies with billions of users. That's real. That's rare. And that's exactly why what I'm about to say matters.

The gap isn't your knowledge. It's that your knowledge is still trapped inside a W-2. You've invested in Subscription Creation — which tells me you're already thinking about the right problem. But here's what's missing: the system that takes everything you know and makes it run without you having to choose between your job and your business. Right now, building your subscription means you're the one writing, publishing, selling, onboarding, and delivering. That's not a subscription business. That's a second job.

Here's what changes: An authority-building agent that takes your existing knowledge — the things you'd say in Slack, in a code review, in a system design meeting — and turns it into consistent published content that positions you as the go-to voice on AI/ML infrastructure for practitioners who are tired of hype. A subscriber acquisition agent that identifies engineering leads, CTOs, and founders who are actively searching for exactly what you know, and pulls them into your world automatically. A subscription delivery agent that packages your expertise into tiered recurring value — templates, teardowns, office hours queues, private community triggers — without you manually running any of it. You've built systems like this for Amazon. Tonight is about building one for yourself.

Tonight, Rich is going to pull up your business — live — and show you exactly what this looks like in your specific situation. Not a demo. Not a hypothetical. Your business, on screen, with the agents mapped out in real time. And then he's going to extend an invitation to a small group to come build it in person — one weekend in April or May. The people who are in the room tonight are the people who get that invitation. You've already put down a deposit. Now you need to show up. Be there tonight.

— Claude Code

Rich Schefren's AI system

What They Do

John is a Senior Software Engineer at AWS specializing in ML infrastructure, Kubernetes orchestration, and generative AI tooling. With prior experience at Meta and Microsoft, he operates at the intersection of cloud architecture and applied AI — and is in the process of productizing that expertise into a subscription-based knowledge business.

What We Found

John has 12+ years of hands-on experience across the exact AI/ML infrastructure stack that most consultants can only approximate. His investment in Rich's Subscription Creation program signals active intent to transition from practitioner to published authority. His technical depth — SageMaker, PyTorch pipelines, Azure ML, Kubernetes at scale — is a genuine competitive moat that most content creators in this space don't have.

The Gap

The subscription business is likely still manual — content created when time allows, no systematic lead acquisition, delivery dependent on John showing up. The irony is that he has the technical skill to automate all of it, but the build hasn't happened yet. Every week without the system is a week where his expertise compounds for Amazon instead of himself.

The Opportunity

John is positioned to become the definitive subscription resource for engineering leaders navigating AI/ML infrastructure decisions — a market that is exploding and deeply underserved by credible practitioners. The AI system that gets him there: a content agent, an acquisition agent, and a delivery agent running in parallel while he keeps his day job. He doesn't need to quit AWS to build this. He needs the system built right.

Ready to build your AI system?