Fletcher Hillier

Fletcher Hillier is a systems architect, inventor, and entrepreneur focused on building practical technologies that give people greater autonomy, capability, and freedom. His work combines automation, robotics, AI, 3D printing, biological production, and sustainable systems to help individuals accomplish more with less. Fletcher believes technology should amplify human potential—not replace it—and builds systems designed to make people more capable, independent, and productive.

Where this comes from

I got into construction because my dad taught me how to use tools, and my grandpa taught me music along with some woodworking. I worked with my brother Oscar for years — we were in the family business for most of our young life, and then we took the skills our dad gave us and used them to earn a living.

I really liked operating machines. I ran a 65-foot zoom boom lift on a few jobs, a skid steer for a few months on a dairy farm levelling beds and scraping pens, and a plough for a season — a large tractor with a front blade with wings and a rear box plough, which I loved, though I didn't love the random schedule that comes with snow removal. The ride-behind skid steer was always a lot of fun on the smaller jobs; we could drill all the holes for a fencing job in a few hours.

Oscar and I did renovations and exterior balcony railing installations for entire apartment buildings, then moved into the pool industry together for about four years. Full pool construction with Warehouse Guys — concrete, pool plumbing, opening and closing pools, safety covers and liners. It was heavy labour, moving rock all day, long hours in the summer heat. We ended up focusing the business on liners and safety covers.

After that I started researching AI heavily and focused on it for about a year. Now I build a lot of different websites and projects on a network of more than 26 of my own API servers. Those services are the building blocks for everything else I make, so each project accelerates the next one.

That is the same idea I am chasing everywhere else, which is why these projects look unrelated but aren't. Every one of them takes something that currently costs a person hours or years — comparing AI models, searching scientific literature, learning trigonometry, laying out a fence, sourcing produce, structuring a sponsorship — and compresses it, so that time comes back to the person doing the work. Valuing time systemically is the design constraint in all of it.

The work is the argument. Everything here is live, so use it and judge it on that.

Festivals, and family

I'm also Operations Manager for London Ribfest, which runs roughly 200,000 people through Victoria Park, along with the London Children's Festival and the London Food Festival, through our family company, Family Shows Canada. My dad, Doug Hillier, is President. Across Southwestern Ontario I work festivals as a jack-of-all-trades — bars, booths, setup, trailers, equipment, vendors, crowds, and whatever breaks mid-shift.