Alison Hughes, Co-founder & CEO

Alison is an enthusiastic maker, software and firmware engineer, entrepreneur, dj, garment sewist, and goat farmer. Her code has supported audio hardware in many Apple products over the last decade, including Macs, iPhone and iPad, and the Apple Cinema Display. She also served as Apple’s lead driver developer and liaison to third party device manufacturers for plug-and-play USB audio. In addition to her contribution as an engineer, she co-founded Apple’s first technical women’s affinity group, Women@Apple-Tech.

Outside of Apple, she has worked with technology startups in various roles, from developing web apps and database architecture during the dot-com era to software consulting for OtherMill, a desktop fabrication tool for makers. After moving to Colorado in 2015, she created HeyChicken!, a smart chicken coop door for urban backyard farmers. In 2017, Alison and Nathan co-founded Beatrice Forms, which makes custom dress forms from smartphone 3D body scans.

Alison holds an M.S. in Computer Science from San Francisco State University, where she completed her thesis on wireless performance control of software-based music synthesizers.

Nathan Barefield, Co-founder

Nathan has spent the last decade working in the software industry. During his seven year tenure at Apple, he designed web tools to support worldwide customer service teams and later developed critical automated test frameworks for iOS and OS X. He also worked at Pivotal Labs as a full-stack web and iOS developer, becoming an expert in Pivotal’s Agile software and test-driven development processes, as well as helping clients build their engineering teams.  

In addition to his background in software, he employs his life-long fabrication experience and B.S. in Mechanical Engineering to help his clients test their product/market fit through rapid prototyping. In his free time, he enjoys building and riding bicycles, fly fishing in the Front Range backcountry, and tending to his farm animals at home.