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Can you fit a real pedal into something this small?
Olinthus, 2023 onward. Sketch, CAD, board layout, tooling, contract manufacturer — the whole path from a silly idea to a successfully selling product.
About
Charles Etienne
Co-Founder, Olinthus · Los Angeles
Born in Montreal, raised bilingual, and a jazz musician in New York before Los Angeles and a physics degree at CSUN. I have spent the years since making things that get manufactured.
I joined Strymon early on when everyone wore every hat. That dynamic proved to be an incredible opportunity: I had the freedom to dive in, learn and get exposed to every phase of product development. Over my tenure, I grew from weekend repair guy, to mechanical designer, and then eventually being part of the team that made big decisions on the product that we made.
In 2022, I stepped in as CTO, Director of Product Development, at Two Notes Audio Engineering. My focus was bringing cohesion and discipline to the pipeline: I worked on bridging the gap between product development and marketing, grounding the product roadmap in direct customer feedback, and making calls on which initiatives were realistic given our bandwidth and resources.
In 2023 I co-founded Olinthus with Ethan Tufts. We design and build the world’s smallest effects pedals. I take our products from concept through production — CAD, sourcing, compliance and contract manufacturing.
I also experiment with agentic-AI workflows in our own development: LLM agents drive KiCad and FreeCAD through MCP and draft purchase orders, which I review and approve.
I work in English and French, and I hold US, Canadian and EU (Belgian) citizenship.