Founders, executives, and boards retain me for the constraint they cannot name and the opportunity they cannot price.
I have sat in rooms with giants,
and I see them differently.
I have raised money on nearly every instrument there is, and sat across from some of the largest companies in the world and the people who own or run them. Not much impresses me. That's a feature.
I have never been institutionalized. My whole career has been my own companies or venture-backed ones, so I still think freely and creatively. That used to be ordinary. Now it is rare, and it is the reason founders, executives, and boards retain me.
The same ten questions,
until one of them breaks.
Asked in whatever order a company needs them, for as long as the answering takes.
The questions are simple. Answering them honestly is not, and what the fix costs is never something anyone can quote from the outside.
I build my own,
and I fix what others cannot name.
My own ventures keep me in the market as it is now, not as I remember it — raising, hiring, shipping, selling. That is the difference between advice and commentary.
The industry changes; the constraints repeat. Board seats, or simply an open line — founders bring me the call before they make it, and I give them the read from having made it.
Or to find the one underneath it. I work inside the team and stay on it until it moves — breadth from advising across sectors, depth from having run the companies below.
Operator first,
everything else second.
Golf-course software, built around design and ease of use in an industry that had not been asked to expect either.
Video calls on any device, used in almost every country. An unasked-for Fast Company piece took the site down.
An IP company holding patents on strike-face substrates for body armor, in work with the U.S. Department of War.
How a product looks and feels is a
decision about the business.
Not a decoration applied afterward. Design and interface get the same attention here as the P&L, because buyers read them first.
Few companies,
long horizons.