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Can you fit a real pedal into something this small?
Olinthus, 2023 onward. Sketch, CAD, board layout, tooling and a contract manufacturer — the whole path from a drawing on paper to trays coming off an assembly line.
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.
At Strymon I started as a mechanical designer in 2011 and finished as project manager, running a 17-product line as part of a small, fast-growing team. In between I ran industrial design for 15+ product lines and helped deploy the company’s product data management system.
In 2022 I was CTO of a French audio company, where I built the product strategy, roadmap and specifications, and reformed how development actually ran.
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 run agentic-AI workflows in our own development: LLM agents drive KiCad and FreeCAD through MCP and draft purchase orders, which I review and approve before anything reaches a supplier. It is genuinely useful and genuinely unfinished.
I work in English and French, and I hold US, Canadian and EU (Belgian) citizenship.