From Law Firm File Clerk to Startup CTO

Paul Baker didn’t grow up dreaming of starting a company. He just kept finding better ways to do things—and eventually realized he could bet on himself.

Today, Paul is the co-founder of Noble Squad, a dev consultancy and fractional CTO shop that works with early-stage startups and commerce companies. The idea is simple: great engineers with entrepreneurial instincts who can fix broken systems, scale teams, and bring order to code chaos. But the path to Noble Squad was anything but linear.

Philly Roots and the Dishwasher to Chef Pipeline

Paul grew up just outside Philadelphia. His parents weren’t entrepreneurs. They played it safe—public school teacher, corporate job, pension plan. But Paul had different wiring. He started out mowing lawns, then landed a job as a dishwasher at the nicest restaurant in town. Within two years, he was running the line. At 17, he was leading a kitchen of career chefs twice his age.

The restaurant owner was an entrepreneur himself, and the vibe was clear: if you could do the job, you got the job. No bureaucracy. No waiting your turn. Just prove yourself.

"I told the executive chef I wanted his job," Paul says. "He said, 'Come get it.' And they meant it."

That ethos stuck with him. Seems to be common among restaurant owners!

From Military Plans to Paper-Pushing

After high school, Paul enrolled at West Point. But a training injury sidelined that path. He lost his commission and found himself starting over, working as a temp file clerk at a law firm. The drop in status was jarring: from commanding artillery units to pushing paper.

But that’s where things got interesting.

One of the lawyers was launching his own boutique bankruptcy firm and needed help. Paul stepped in. He offered to keep doing grunt work by day while teaching himself networking and programming at night.

Within a year, Paul had replaced their outsourced IT firm.

The First Business: Ahead of Its Time

That same firm helped Paul get his first business off the ground. It was 2002. Paul named the company Pyrochnics—a mistake, in hindsight, since more than one prospective client thought he sold fireworks. But the model was far ahead of its time.

Paul ran remote diagnostics and maintenance for law firms using custom scripts and bots. Every morning, he’d get automated reports on each client’s machines. If everything looked green, he went surfing.

He made $36,000 that year working 2 hours a week.

"This was before Tim Ferriss. Before the 4-Hour Workweek. I had the model, but I had no clue how to market it."

His only campaign was a rave-style postcard mailer. It flopped. No mentor. No marketing know-how. He let the business go and went back to school.

From Coding Ally to Noble Squad

After finishing undergrad and then a master’s in computer science, Paul built a strong career as a startup engineer. He had a knack for untangling bad code, fixing broken systems, and mentoring junior developers. He bounced between early-stage companies as both an IC and an engineering leader.

He also got good at paying down technical debt—the unglamorous work of fixing messy codebases so teams could actually build. Think janitor-meets-architect. Not sexy. Extremely valuable (the type of value you’d want in your corner when things get hard).

Eventually, Paul launched a new agency: Coding Ally. He grossed just under half a million in the first year. But when a divorce hit, he shut it down.

"I didn’t want to get saddled with future obligations I couldn’t handle. I punted."

He went back into full-time work, paid his dues, paid off the alimony, and started planning his next move.

Building with a Co-Founder This Time

The biggest change with Noble Squad: he’s not doing it alone.

Paul teamed up with a former boss to launch the business. His co-founder handles most of the deep technical delivery, while Paul leads on sales and marketing. It’s a strong fit, and it allows Paul to do what he does best: close deals, manage relationships, and find opportunities to grow.

Noble Squad started focused on SaaS companies, but with funding drying up, they pivoted to commerce. That shift’s opened up new contracts and steadier revenue. And because Paul has a deep backlog of technical wins and startup scale experience, he can walk into almost any company and make an impact fast.

The AI Edge

Like a lot of technical founders, Paul spent the end of 2023 wondering if his job was about to disappear.

"ChatGPT started writing real code. I was kind of freaked out," he says. "But then I started working with tools like Cursor, and I realized—you still need to know what you’re doing."

Now, Paul sees AI as leverage. He can build faster. Solve problems quicker. Deliver better work with fewer engineers. And more than anything, it allows him to keep Noble Squad small and scrappy.

"I don’t want to manage a bloated team. I want A-players. AI lets us do more with less."

The AI layer also helps him on the marketing side. He uses it for personalization, prospect research, and content—anything to get out of manual grunt work.

"I’ve always been that way," he says. "I’d rather write a script than repeat a task. Now AI lets me do that at scale."

Why He Shows Up Every Day

Paul isn’t building Noble Squad to "exit." He wants to solve interesting problems with people he respects. He wants clients who care about quality. He wants teammates who care about the craft.

"I don’t love chaos. But I love making sense of it. That’s my zone."

And after two decades of bouncing between startups, agencies, and full-time roles, he’s finally doing it on his own terms.

If you’re also doing “this founder thing” on your own terms, we probably want to meet you—see if Thrive is a fit!