Summary
Idiorrhythmic technologist and high-performance systems architect. Inveterate entrepreneur with a focus on areas where new developments make novel businesses feasible. Proven builder and leader of highly effective teams. Demonstrated ability to recruit, motivate, and inspire technical staff. Builder of engineering organizations which collaborate effectively with the entire business. Motivated by making progress. My superpower is framing.
Intimate experience with:
- Knowledge discovery, search, information extraction
- Large-scale distributed systems
- Information security
- Virtual worlds
- Social software
Experience
Undisclosed
Undisclosed (2020 - present)
Stay tuned.
Co-founder, CTO, Factotum
Totomic, Inc., San Francisco, CA. (September 2012 - September 2018)
We apply modern analytic methods to various applications in residential real estate.
Mentor
Startmate, Melbourne, Australia. (2017 - 2019)
Startmate is an Australian startup accelerator which mobilizes a deep mentor network to help new companies learn what they need to succeed.
Fellowship Mentor
Thiel Foundation, San Francisco, CA. (2011 - 2015)
The Thiel Foundation defends and promotes freedom in all its dimensions: political, personal, and economic. Under its umbrella, The Thiel Fellowship offers two-year grants to twenty extraordinary people under twenty years old, every year.
Co-founder, VP of Technology
Brainstem Media, San Francisco, CA. (March 2012 - October 2012)
Development and commercialization of PULP: the first online social publishing platform. Every book is its own enterprise, whether self-published or the latest bestseller from a big New York publishing house. PULP makes it easy for professional writers, editors, agents, and publishers to assemble, market, sell, and manage digital literature. (Brainstem Media was formed as a spinoff from Subutai Corporation.)
Co-founder, CEO, President, and CTO
Subutai Corporation, San Francisco, CA and Seattle, WA. (January 2010 - March 2012)
Developed the first online social transmedia platform and entertainment properties, along with a cutting-edge community publishing platform. Subutai first created The Mongoliad, a novel by Neal Stephenson, Greg Bear, and friends, along with its sequels, and it continues to create further ramifications of the Foreworld Saga—including both text and graphic novels.
Partner
Volvox Associates, LLC, San Francisco, CA. (August 2001 - present)
Volvox specializes in helping its clients develop new businesses at the intersection of social media and entertainment. We work with startups, Fortune 100 multinationals, venture capital firms, and government, and can assist in product strategy, design, and architecture. Volvox’s principals have helped launch multiple category-defining products and businesses which have generated billions of dollars in market capitalization. Our clients include MTV Networks, Majesco Entertainment, WIRED, Apple Computer, In-Q-Tel, and several US government agencies.
Co-founder and Chief Technology Officer
Smith & Tinker, San Francisco, CA. (February 2007 - Sep 2007)
Helped to define strategy, products, businesses, and acquire funding for the first major connected toy company.
Advisor
Various Organizations, San Francisco, CA. (January 2001 - present)
Serve as strategic and technical advisor primarily to startup and other early-stage businesses. Assist with identifying technology risks and opportunities, implications of emerging research on market development, and strategies for achieving early-stage goals.
Vice President of Engineering and CTO
Atom Entertainment, Inc. San Francisco, CA. (June 2004 - January 2007)
Brought new vision to established engineering group. Set research and development priorities for the company, keeping it current with new technology. Formed corporate strategy with other members of executive team, ultimately resulting in company's sale to Viacom in September 2006.
Tore down department's existing engineering structures and replaced them with cutting-edge best practices while more than doubling the size of the department. Designed and led development of a new state-of-the-art in-house multiplayer game platform.
Chief Platform Architect
Perpetual Entertainment, Inc. San Francisco, CA. (June 2002 - June 2004)
Designed and led implementation effort to build a server platform for the efficient, reliable, and secure hosting of multiple massively multiplayer online games. Continuously adapted platform design and implementation to swiftly-changing requirements.
Co-founder and Chief Technology Officer
Xigo, Inc. San Francisco, CA. (February 1998 - June 2001)
Co-founder and founding VP of Engineering of a startup which developed real-time unstructured text and numeric analysis applications and services for use in brokerage, banking, personal finance, and content publishing markets. Users included Web Street Securities, JPMorgan Chase, E*Trade, and Merrill Lynch.
- Contributed to corporate strategy as a member of executive team.
- Supported acquisition of venture funding and recruiting of world-class board of directors, executive staff, and advisors.
- Hired initial engineering team and grew engineering, QA, and IT departments to a total of approximately 45 people before hiring replacement VP of Engineering and moving into CTO role.
- Spoke at industry events. Won the IDG "Demo God" award.
- Served as senior sales engineer, supporting closure of all major account sales, venture funding, and licenses.
- Invented several technologies which were key components of the company's intellectual property, and which resulted in eleven patent filings.
Senior Engineer
Consensus Development Corporation (Certicom). Berkeley, CA. (October 1997 - September 1998)
Researched, designed, and developed leading commercial information security and cryptography products.
Senior Research Scientist
Apple Advanced Technology Group. Cupertino, CA. (October 1990 - October 1997)
Confidential research involving design and implementation of algorithms and interfaces in the domains of information retrieval and message filtering. Applied for several patents involving algorithms and user interface technologies, some of which have issued. Much of this work has been productized in MacOS and elsewhere: modern newsfeeds and product listings based on a mixture of personal feedback and social relationships are direct results of inventions I made during this time.
Primary research areas:
- Concept extraction / information retrieval
- Novel user interface concepts
- Applications for new devices and new technologies
Programmer & Designer
Thought I Could, Inc. (1990-1991)
One of three co-authors of commercial software Wallpaper, for Macintosh. The software allowed editing, installation, and randomization of desktop patterns.
Programmer
The Perseus Project. Harvard University. (May 1988 - May 1989)
Designed and programmed Pandora—a Macintosh application to search Greek literature on CD-ROM.
Programmer
Language Systems, Inc. Providence, Rhode Island. (May 1987 - January 1988)
Designed and programmed a spelling checker for the Italian language. Designed and programmed other projects involving spelling checking in Spanish.
Education
Brown University
Sc.B. in Cognitive Science.
Publications and Patents
Selected publications and patents available here.
Interests and Activities
Martial arts, including aikido (third degree black belt), kyudo (first degree black belt), archery with the Western recurve bow, and historial European martial arts, especially Bartitsu and longsword study. Rock climbing. Yoga. Human languages, including Japanese, French, Mandarin, Spanish, and Latin. Making music on anything, lately mostly wind instruments including shakuhachi and didgeridoo. Maori poi. Reading fiction and watching film. Brewing alcohol and making hot sauce. Cooking things and making other people eat them.