Black Swan Group

BLACK SWAN GROUP — SEATTLE

Engineering overlooked opportunities.

Black Swan Group builds owner-controlled software, portable infrastructure, and durable physical products.

Explore current workAbout the founder
Black Swan Group LLC

Two decades of systems engineering

Avionics · Embedded platforms · Android · Cloud services · Amazon Devices · Halo · Alexa Smart Home · Matter

Black Swan Group applies experience from mission-critical avionics and mass-market connected products to independent software, infrastructure, and physical-product ventures.

Work

Current work

Black Swan Group is advancing four explorations across software, infrastructure, and physical products. Each began with a problem observed firsthand and is shown at its current stage of evidence.

Applied software and automation

In developmentActive 2026

Black Swan Procurement

Problem — Purchase intent is trapped inside retailer-specific search boxes. Customers repeatedly restate the same requirements while every seller represents products, availability, pricing, and carts differently.

Product — Black Swan Procurement is a provider-neutral shopping engine that converts natural-language requests into typed purchase specifications and routes them through merchant-specific search and cart adapters.

A purchase request should be written once, remain under the customer's control, and work across whichever seller or interface responds best.

Evidence

  • Canonical, schema-validated purchase-request model shared across every interface— Implemented
  • Command-line, REST, MCP, and web interfaces on one search-and-cart engine— Implemented
  • Kroger authentication, product search, and cart integration working end-to-end— Implemented
  • Merchant-adapter architecture isolating retailer-specific logic from the core model— Implemented
  • Product normalization and ranking across multiple merchants— In progress

Next — Validate product normalization and cart handoff across multiple merchants without allowing retailer-specific assumptions to contaminate the core procurement model.

ArchitectureActive 2026

Black Swan Photo

Problem — Teams that need to process large image collections must first assemble object storage, upload APIs, queues, workers, scheduling, isolation, result storage, metering, and delivery infrastructure before they can run the algorithm that creates value.

Product — Black Swan Photo is being developed as an API-first photo compute platform combining persistent image storage, scheduled processing jobs, structured results, and metered asset delivery. The underlying storage, execution, and result-management substrate is working; the multi-tenant control plane, public API, metering, and billing layer are the next commercial milestone.

Computation should move to the customer's persistent collection. A developer should be able to store images once, submit or schedule a job, retrieve reproducible results, and pay for the storage, compute, and delivery consumed.

Evidence

  • Provider-neutral archive storage across filesystem, S3, and S3-compatible providers— Implemented
  • Containerized job execution, validated locally— Validated locally
  • Containerized job execution, validated in AWS (S3-backed archive, EC2 workers)— Validated in AWS
  • Immutable, versioned result catalog (PostgreSQL)— Implemented
  • Non-destructive review workflow (keep/reject/highlight, multi-level undo)— Implemented
  • Accounts, authentication, and API keys— Planned
  • Collections and job APIs (immediate and scheduled)— Architecture defined
  • Curated algorithm registry, webhooks, usage metering, billing, spending controls, and CDN delivery— Planned

Next — Process a real collection through the complete commercial workflow: authenticated upload, durable storage, queued execution, immutable results, resource metering, generated-asset delivery, and a test invoice.

Connected systems and infrastructure

Operating prototypeActive 2026

Owner-Controlled Infrastructure

Problem — Home and small-office infrastructure increasingly depends on rented control planes, proprietary appliances, and external services that owners cannot independently repair, migrate, or operate.

Product — Owner-Controlled Infrastructure is an operating reference environment for local compute, storage, networking, remote development, and selectively used public-cloud capacity.

Ownership is operational, not nominal. A system is not meaningfully owned if its data, configuration, or essential control path cannot be exported, repaired, or replaced.

Evidence

  • NAS-backed storage with a code-managed reverse proxy and local DNS/TLS— Implemented
  • Containerized application stack— Implemented
  • Dedicated gateway hardware— Implemented
  • Separate compute-node architecture— In progress
  • Compute-node component selection— In progress
  • Clean separation of gateway and compute responsibilities— Architecture defined
  • Remote development and media services running on the local environment— Implemented
  • Public-cloud burst compute— Architecture defined
  • Documented recovery path per component— In progress

Next — Complete the separation of gateway, storage, and compute responsibilities and document a reproducible recovery path for each component.

Durable physical products

Product architecture researchResearch initiated 2025 · Active 2026

Durable Control Systems

Problem — Premium controllers are often expensive but structurally disposable. A failed switch, joystick, cable, battery, connector, or platform-specific module can strand the entire product.

Product — Durable Control Systems is a modular controller architecture built around a serviceable mechanical chassis, replaceable controls, accessible fasteners, and separable platform interfaces. The initial prototype focuses on a premium fight stick or leverless controller, where enthusiasts already value modification, tactile quality, and replaceable components.

The mechanical instrument should survive individual component failures and platform generations.

Evidence

  • Fight-stick and leverless-controller component research— In progress
  • Aluminum-chassis and carbon-fiber material studies— In progress
  • Platform-interface module concept separating the mechanical core from console-specific interfaces— Architecture defined
  • Accessible-fastener and repair-workflow strategy— Planned
  • Physical prototype— Planned

Next — Build a mechanically credible fight-stick or leverless-controller prototype that validates assembly, serviceability, ergonomics, material behavior, and component replacement.

About

Founder-led, Seattle-based

Black Swan Group LLC is a Seattle-based, founder-led product and engineering company built on two decades of cross-stack engineering experience — from mission-critical avionics to Amazon's consumer device platforms.

James Swan

Founder — Seattle, Washington

James Swan is a computer engineer and product architect with two decades of experience across mission-critical avionics, embedded platforms, Android, cloud services, and consumer devices. At Amazon, he worked across retail device systems, Halo wearables, Alexa Smart Home, and Matter, frequently owning problems that crossed firmware, mobile, cloud, tooling, and interoperability boundaries. Earlier, he developed avionics and satellite-communications systems at Harris Corporation. James founded Black Swan Group in early 2026 to apply that cross-layer engineering discipline to independent products and durable businesses. He holds a B.S. in Computer Engineering with a minor in Computer Science from Clemson University.

Read James's background →LinkedInhello@blackswan.dev

Approach

How an exploration earns further investment

Black Swan Group looks for markets and workflows that have accepted unnecessary complexity, fragility, cost, or lock-in. Few explorations advance — the method is the same regardless of domain.

  1. 01

    Observe

    Start with a recurring failure, cost, ownership problem, or workaround that users have learned to tolerate.

  2. 02

    Map

    Understand the workflow, incentives, technical boundaries, suppliers, economics, and failure modes.

  3. 03

    Build

    Create the smallest implementation capable of testing the consequential assumption.

  4. 04

    Test

    Measure technical feasibility, real use, cost, and external response.

  5. 05

    Commit

    Advance only when the evidence justifies greater time, capital, and organizational commitment.

Principles

How we decide what to build

  • 01Practical ownership

    Customers should be able to export their data, replace providers, repair hardware, and understand the systems they depend on.

  • 02Complexity must pay rent

    Every abstraction, dependency, and proprietary boundary must justify its lifecycle cost.

  • 03Products should survive vendors

    Prefer open formats, documented interfaces, replaceable infrastructure, and components that can evolve independently.

  • 04Evidence earns investment

    Prototypes, observed use, cost, reliability, and market response determine which explorations advance.

Contact

Build, supply, or validate with us.

Black Swan Group is interested in design and technical partners for active explorations, suppliers and manufacturers for durable physical products, and commercial partners who can help validate a specific market.

  • Design or technical partnership
  • Supplier or manufacturing relationship
  • Commercial or licensing discussion
  • Other relevant inquiry
hello@blackswan.dev

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