Product Insights for Emerging Technology

20 years in emerging tech — ex-Head of Product at Palantir, now founder of two ventures.

At Common Sense, we’re building modern agentic AI systems for local government — 100x increases in productivity across critical workflows that simplify civil service and delight citizens.

At First Principles, we help emerging tech companies generate massive value, ship faster, align teams, and unlock product-market fit or hypergrowth — through fractional product leadership and expert product coaching.

Whether it serves 10,000 users or 10 million residents, the system has to work — and keep working.

Sound like I can help you? Get in touch:

adam@firstprinciples.la or adam@commonsensetech.ai

Adam Judelson

The U.S. hasn’t had a balanced budget in 25 years.

Every administration since Clinton has overspent – not because taxes are too low, but because government systems are too inefficient.

Obama tried to fix it with the U.S. Digital Service. They saved HealthCare.gov and proved world-class engineers can make government work. But USDS was too small and its remit too limited to tackle the structural waste driving deficits.

This year, Trump and Elon Musk rebranded it as the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). The mandate: cut $1B a day. Agencies were slashed, programs shut down, costs trimmed. But broken software and processes stayed in place – and when systems are broken, the costs always come creeping back in.

Both efforts failed for different reasons:

– USDS lacked breadth, urgency, and proactivity
– DOGE lacked precision, patience, and long-term vision.

That’s the gap we’re filling with Common Sense.

We work outside government, so we can move fast. But we go deep into the plumbing – the legacy systems, the paperwork, the IT that wastes billions and frustrates citizens.

Urgent enough to matter.

Precise enough to actually work.

Building Common Sense (govtech) | Founder, First Principles | Product Insights for Emerging Tech | Ex-Palantir | 4x Venture-Backed Exec

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Co-Founder & CEO @ Cydarm Technologies

Vaughan is the Co-founder and CEO of Cydarm Technologies, the leading Cybersecurity Incident Response Management (CIRM) solution. Vaughan has a PhD in Computer Science from RMIT University, where he also obtained Bachelor's degrees in Computer Science and Computer Systems Engineering. Vaughan is named on two patents, awarded while a Forward Deployed Engineer at Palantir Technologies, where he worked with National Security customers to solve complex data problems. Vaughan also has a background in Defence, having served as an Assistant Director at the Department of Defence of Australia, where he managed projects and teams. Vaughan is passionate about creating innovative and scalable solutions that protect and empower organizations and individuals from cyber threats. He values collaboration, diversity, and learning, and seeks to leverage his expertise and experience to make a positive impact in the field of cybersecurity.

Vaughan Shanks

Modern software infrastructure, but the pillars at the bottom are made of BGP and one of them occasionally disappears for a few hours

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