About
Smatthew Cohen
AI Operator. Former stand-up comedian. Renamed myself for SEO reasons, which is either the most on-brand thing I've ever done or proof I've gone too far.
I'm an AI Operator. I embed inside your business, learn how it actually runs, and build the systems you're missing.
About the Name
Yes, I renamed myself. Here's why.
whoami --verify
S. Matthew Cohen
Founder, Ingenium Vector
Former Stand-up Comedian
Current AI Operator
Warning: Disambiguation Required:
Not Steve Cohen, owner of the NY Mets
Not Steve Cohen, the Magician
Not Steve Cohen, Congressman (TN-09)
Not a lawyer (seriously, don't ask)
My legal name is S. Matthew Cohen. The S used to stand for Steven, but I dropped it.
Turns out sharing a name with a billionaire hedge fund manager, a congressman, and a magician who does close-up card tricks at the Waldorf makes it hard to build a personal brand. The New York Times literally wrote an article about this problem. Not about me. About the fact that the name itself is a disambiguation nightmare. Try showing up in search results when three famous guys already own every variation of your name.
So I renamed myself. Smatthew. One word. No period.
It started as a practical decision and became something I actually like. It's weird enough to remember and specific enough that when you search for it, you find me and not a guy who owns the Mets.
Here's something most people don't know about me: I spent six years doing stand-up comedy. Started at 38 because I did improv in my twenties but the day job got too big. Performed all over NYC, especially New York Comedy Club where I was a regular. Did the San Francisco scene. Opened for an Olympic athlete who quit sports to do stand-up at West Side Comedy Theater in Santa Monica.
My style was observational storytelling with one-liners tucked in. I liked to think of my act as a magic show where everything was sleight of hand, but the hand was my mouth. Very progressive, lots of social commentary where you thought I was going to say something bad and then I'd say something weird instead. Everything always took a hard left or a hard right. Really smart people and really weird people got it. Everyone else just stared at me.
Halfway through my stand-up career, another comedian told me I was autistic. I told him he was wrong. He said he was autistic too and he could tell. I got tested to prove him wrong. I was wrong. That diagnosis changed how I understand myself, my work, everything. I started a non-profit called Autism Jokes to get autistic people involved in the arts. I went on Adderall, which also helped more than I expected.
The company is Ingenium Vector. I run it out of New York City. The name is Latin and math. I picked it because it means something to me and nothing to an algorithm trying to confuse me with an MLM company.
What I Actually Do
Sales kid. Comedian. AI Operator. In that order.
I got my first sales job as a teenager because I didn't want to work at my parents' health food store. I was terrible at it. Then I put my heart into it and got really good.
In 2010 I launched a sales firm called Tortoise & Rooster, helping boutique manufacturers for twelve years. Same LLC that eventually became Ingenium Vector. Not a pivot. An evolution.
At 38 I started doing stand-up. For six years I told jokes, got heckled, learned how to read a room of strangers in four seconds, and discovered I was autistic (long story, it's above). Eventually I got tired of dealing with comedy world gatekeepers. Figured if I was going to be in a scene overcrowded with giant egos, I should move into AI and business consulting.
Mid-2024 my close friend Jay was running a law firm and struggling with the business side of it. I told him if he didn't let me take over managing it, I wouldn't be his friend anymore. I guess he likes being my friend, cuz he let me.
I started to take ownership of every business I worked for and it's never stopped.
Every business I worked with had too many tools, too many vendors, and no one connecting any of it. The marketing agency didn't talk to the web developer. The CRM wasn't connected to anything useful. The owner was the integration layer, and the owner was exhausted.
So I built a different model. I become part of your company. I learn how it runs. Then I build the systems that are missing, using AI where it actually helps and skipping it where it doesn't. No templates. No playbooks from someone else's business.
The job title on my business card says AI Operator. What that actually means is I'm the person who figures out what your business needs and builds it. Websites, automations, content, intelligence systems, security monitoring. Whatever the operation requires.
Comedy Is the Cherry
The comedy is the cherry. The understanding of humanity is the sundae.
People confuse comedy and humor all the time. Michael Shurtleff has a great description of the difference in his book Audition. The comedy is just the cherry on top. The sense of humor and the understanding of humanity? That's the sundae.
Working with someone who was a comedian is useful for a reason most people don't think about: comedians are introspective. When I go inside myself to think about your business and what it needs, I go deep. I come out with things you never would have thought of because you're too close to the situation.
It shows up in the work. One client has ADHD and loves music I've never heard of. For each competitor audit report, I research her favorite artists and hide puns and song titles throughout the document. She told me it's the only reason she reads the whole thing. Another client needs to talk everything out, so I built an app where he speaks into it and an AI agent turns it into tasks and documents and action items. That's not on any menu. I built it because I understood how his brain works.
Most consultants hand you a deliverable. I hand you a deliverable that was built for how your specific brain works. It's never going to be bland or boring.
Clients don't usually know about the comedy background until they tell me I'm funny. Then I deadpan: "Cool. Well, I wish you had told me that sooner before I quit my career as a stand-up comedian." Little pause. Then I just keep going.
The only thing fake about me is my name Smatthew, and I only use it because my real one can't be found by Google. Everything else about me is 100% Smatthew.
*still not my real name
While I'm Being Honest
The Anti-Vaporware Manifesto
Own Your Stack
I build on infrastructure you control. The code lives in your repositories. The data lives in your databases. You control every bit of it. No vendor lock-in. No surprise price hikes. That's what Data Sovereignty actually means.
Measure or It Didn't Happen
Every system comes with dashboards. Every dashboard has numbers that matter. I don't do "brand awareness" unless I can show you exactly how many dollars it's worth.
No Buzzword Soup
I don't talk about "synergies" or "stakeholder alignment." I build systems that work and explain them in plain English. If I can't tell you what something does in one sentence, it probably doesn't do anything.
Confused by terms like GEO or SEO? Check the Glossary for plain English definitions.
Ground Truth for AI
Large Language Models are already deciding who you are. I make sure they get it right. That's what Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) means: establishing your entity in the knowledge graph before hallucinations become "facts."
Let's Talk.
30 minutes. No pitch deck. No templated proposal. Just a direct conversation about what you're building and whether I can help.