Tim Costello · operator, builder, industry transformer
He walks into fragmented, stuck industries and leaves them transformed. Cars. Chips. Homebuilding. Now magnetics. If your industry is a thousand small players waiting for someone to build the platform, that is the job he does.
A 20-minute call. No pitch deck needed, just what you know about your market.
The difference
A sponsor buys a dozen companies and hopes they add up. Tim does the opposite. He is an operator first — he has run the factory floor, launched the product, and built the shared platform a whole industry stands on. He consolidates from the inside: on the operations and the technology, not just the balance sheet. That is why his transformations stick.
The playbook
Six moves, run over and over across four industries. They travel.
Find the fragmented segment, map the players, and lay out the path to a single platform that out-serves every small operator.
Move manufacturing from a craft system to lean, flow production. He did it to the semiconductor industry itself.
Build the digital and data layer a fragmented industry cannot build alone, then let every participant run on it.
Bring the thing that does not exist yet to market. He launched the first modern electric car decades early.
Own the IP and the design tools, now AI-enabled, so the platform is not a commodity.
Turn one-off equipment and service sales into software, data and IP subscriptions that compound.
How it works
No deck required to start. Tim works the same way whether the counterpart is an owner, a sponsor, or a board.
Twenty minutes. You bring what you know about your market, the players, and where it is stuck. Tim listens for the pattern.
He maps the fragmented segment: who the operators are, what each lacks, and the shared platform nobody has built yet.
Not a spreadsheet roll-up. The integration, the shared technology and the go-to-market that actually make the pieces add up.
He has run global operations and built an industry platform before. He brings the operator, not just the plan, and the team to run it.
The record
Each of these was a different industry with a different problem. The pattern underneath is the same.
Long before the EV era everyone now takes for granted, Tim oversaw the launch of the GM EV1 — the first modern electric car. Bringing a category into existence, against an entire industry's inertia, is the skill the rest of his career is built on.
At the world's largest maker of semiconductor equipment, Tim drove the transformation of the industry's manufacturing from a craft system into lean, flow production. That shift is part of what made the acceleration of the modern digital world possible, and his work in lean transformation was recognized with the Shingo Prize.
In 2000 Tim founded Builder Homesite as a consortium of rival national homebuilders — Lennar, PulteGroup, KB Home, Beazer and more — and got fierce competitors to stand on one shared technology platform, built and run with his longtime partner Melissa Morman. He created NewHomeSource, the category-defining new-home marketplace, and BDX, the industry's digital-marketing engine.
He led it for 22 years. At scale it served more than 1,300 builders responsible for over 60% of the homes built in the United States. The platform he built was sold to Zonda in 2024, and is now part of CoStar's $800M acquisition of Zonda.
As Chairman and CEO of Polymagnet (Correlated Magnetics), Tim is commercializing programmable magnets — magnets whose field is designed for the application, cutting rare-earth material and creating functions a conventional magnet cannot. And he is running the live playbook: consolidating the fragmented, undercapitalized magnetics-equipment industry into the Applied Materials of Magnetics.
Sugarloaf Mountain Lodge is a 5,000 square-foot, 4.97-star lodge on a thousand-acre ranch near Leadville, Colorado, with Mount Elbert and Mount Massive views — paired with Leadville Offroad Adventures for stay-and-ride. A direct-booking business built and run from the ground up, same instincts, different industry.
"You are the only can-do company we have talked to in the magnetics industry."
— CTO, U.S.-based wind turbine company, on working with Tim's team
Who it's for
Different seats at the same table: a fragmented market that needs an operator to pull it together.
You are one of hundreds of small players and you can see the platform nobody has built. Tim has built it before, twice.
You have the capital and the thesis. You need an operator who consolidates on the operations and the technology, not just the spreadsheet.
The category is ready to modernize and nobody inside it has done it. Tim ran lean transformation at Applied Materials and launched the EV1 at GM.
Rivals who need a shared technology layer. Builder Homesite got Lennar, Pulte, KB and Beazer onto one platform.
He doesn't do it alone
Tim advises and builds through Built For the Future, and leads Polymagnet with the same partners he has built with for two decades.
Where Tim takes on roll-ups, transformations and board work, with the operating depth behind each engagement. The same shop that carried the Builder Homesite playbook now carries it into new industries.
built4f.com ›Tim's partner across 22 years at Builder Homesite and now Chief Experience Officer at Polymagnet. The builder-side and go-to-market half of a partnership that has rolled up an industry once and is doing it again.
The Polymagnet team ›Materials
The conference talk is here for anyone. The investor decks live on the private site, for approved people only.
Agile design of advanced magnetics: how maxels are written, the operating window, circuit optimization and new frontiers. Talk FC-09, Thursday, November 5 at 3:36 PM, Coral 1.
The program gives the talk 12 minutes, so there are two files: the full deck, and a 10-minute version that shows 15 of the slides with a running clock in the speaker notes.
10-minute version Full deck Conference guideThe opportunity, the technology, the traction, the pro forma and the ask.
Proprietary & Confidential · private site
🔒 On the private siteThe full roll-up thesis and the value-creation plan.
Proprietary & Confidential · private site
🔒 On the private siteQuestions
An operator first. He has run global operations, launched a category-defining product, and built and led an industry platform for 22 years. On a roll-up he brings the operating thesis: integration, shared technology, and go-to-market.
A fragmented one: many small players, no shared technology, and processes still run by craft rather than by system. He has worked that pattern in automotive, semiconductors, homebuilding and now magnetics.
Yes. Builder Homesite united rival national homebuilders on one technology platform that served more than 1,300 builders and over 60% of the homes built in the U.S., ran for 22 years, and was sold to Zonda — now part of CoStar's $800M acquisition. The magnetics roll-up through Polymagnet is under way now.
Polymagnet makes programmable magnets — magnets whose field is designed for the application. Around that, Tim is consolidating the fragmented, undercapitalized magnetics-equipment industry into a single platform: the Applied Materials of Magnetics. The thinking behind it lives on the private site.
Book a 20-minute call. Bring what you know about your market, the players, and where it is stuck. No deck required.
It depends on the engagement — advisory, operating, equity, or a board role. The right structure is part of the first conversation, not a fixed package.
Tim builds through Built For the Future and leads Polymagnet with Melissa Morman, his operating partner of more than 20 years, plus the Polymagnet leadership. He doesn't parachute in alone; he brings the team that runs the playbook.
Yes. Tim advises through Built For the Future and serves on the boards of several technology companies.
Yes. He keynotes on industry transformation, roll-ups and advanced magnetics — most recently at IEEE Magnetics in Honolulu and, earlier, a CEDIA keynote. Start with the call link.
They're on the private site, hub.ceotim.com, behind a sign-in. Request access and once you're approved you can open them. They're confidential, so please don't forward them.
On the record
A few starting points.
Twenty minutes with Tim on whether your market is a roll-up waiting for an operator.
Book a call