Tim Hopkins is a product development consultant, mechanical engineer, and inventor with 25+ years of experience building complex physical products across consumer products, mobility, wellness, emerging technology, healthcare, and commercial hardware.

Before founding Outpace, Tim spent six years on Nike’s Engineering Exploration team and later built and led Rivian’s Adventure Products Concept Engineering team. His work has been recognized nationally and internationally, including Time’s Best Inventions, iF Design Award, and Red Dot Award recognition.

Outpace helps founders and brands turn promising ideas into well-executed physical products: shaping the opportunity, proving what matters, engineering the details, and working directly with manufacturing partners to maintain quality through production.

I’ve wanted to invent and design products for as long as I can remember. My grandfather was always making things, and by sixth grade I was sketching shoe concepts for Nike. Years later, that childhood dream came full circle when I originated the idea for Nike Go FlyEase and helped carry it from first sketch to launch.

My approach to product development has always been rooted in curiosity, engineering discipline, and a habit of finding elegant paths through ambiguity. The goal is not just to generate ideas, but to shape the right ideas into solutions that fit the product, the business, and the path to market.

If you’re building a physical product and need senior help bringing it to life, I’d be happy to talk.