The long way round

It looks like a straight line from here. It wasn't.

  1. Growing up: I saw the world a little differently

    If something was a pain, I tried to do something about it. I built Lego and Erector set machines to haul laundry up the chute and fish balls out of the pool, wrote BASIC to get a turtle through a maze, and strapped on suction cups and plungers to see if I could walk up a wall. When I wasn't building, my brother and I were off in the woods, working out how the world worked.

    Lesson: If something's broken, don't wait for someone else to fix it. Try something.

    Skill: Creative problem solving

  2. Early on: Then people started paying me

    I'd do the things I was curious about, and people would ask if they could pay me for them. A lawn care business. A photography business. Selling Pokémon cards on eBay when eBay was brand new. I didn't have a word for it yet.

    Lesson: Follow what you're curious about, and the world finds a way to pay for it.

    Skill: Turning curiosity into value

  3. High school: My first technology transition

    My mom pushed me into black-and-white photography because she thought I'd like it. I picked it up fast, invented my own techniques, won some awards, got invited to the White House Press Corps summer program, and got my hands on the school's first digital cameras. Plenty of photographers called digital cheating. I saw a whole new way to do the thing I loved.

    Lesson: Every technology shift brings fear and possibility at the same time. I've always gone toward the possibility.

    Skill: Seeing possibility in disruption

  4. College: The detour was the path

    I went to Texas for the advertising program and the business school, because I wanted to make money from being creative. It was my first time in Austin. Then life pulled me back to KU, where I got plugged into entrepreneurship, helped stand up the program, and met the mentors who opened my eyes.

    Lesson: The detours keep turning out to be the path.

    Skill: Finding the right people

  5. 2010: Deloitte

    I met a couple of people from Deloitte at a job fair, told them what I was about, and they said I should come work there. The pay was good, so I went. I kept finding faster ways to get my work done, and then didn't have enough interesting work to fill the day. (I got very good at online games.)

    Lesson: I need hard, new problems. Without them, I go looking.

    Skill: Seeing how big companies work

  6. 2010: The Kauffman Foundation

    Then a mentor from college called out of the blue and told me to quit and come to the Kauffman Foundation. Suddenly I was surrounded by entrepreneurs, Startup Weekend and the people funding them, spending time in Silicon Valley and meeting people like Naval Ravikant.

    Lesson: When the right person calls, say yes, even if it means walking away from the safe thing.

    Skill: Understanding how startups get built

  7. 2011: Zaarly

    My mentor pitched Zaarly at Startup Weekend and it took off. Next thing I knew, I was at Ashton Kutcher's house pitching our growth strategy, we'd raised $20 million from Kleiner Perkins, and I was opening offices and building teams for a kind of marketplace nobody had built before. I was also an immature manager who thought he knew everything, and I ran myself into the ground.

    Lesson: Being right about the future doesn't help if you break yourself getting there.

    Skill: Building at startup speed

  8. 2014: Assist, and the first chatbots

    I tried to rebuild by jumping straight into more startups. At Assist we started with peer-to-peer travel recommendations, then tried using chatbots to mimic humans. Our first experiment used Slackbot keyword triggers and the Domino's API to order a pizza from a chat message. The idea was early. I wasn't ready.

    Lesson: The idea can be right and I can still need rebuilding. I had to take care of me first.

    Skill: Spotting the pattern early

  9. 2015: Singularity University

    Lots of startups, no famous names, and overqualified for everything I applied for. Singularity University almost didn't hire me as a product marketer. I ended up leading marketing, brand and events, working with large organizations and their executives on seeing where things are going, and on how hard it is to bring that back inside.

    Lesson: Seeing the future is the easy part. Getting an organization to move toward it is the work.

    Skill: Translating the future for executives

  10. Along the way: Cori

    I met Cori at the start of my time at Singularity University. We both knew San Francisco wasn't home, and it came down to Austin or Seattle. I took her to Austin for her first time to try to convince her, and it worked. Without that, I'd never have met Steve.

    Lesson: Trust the pull, even when you can't explain it.

    Skill: Trusting my gut

  11. 2020: Responsum

    I'd spent years trying to get chatbots to do smart things. Then Steve told me what his team was building, and that it actually worked, and everything clicked. We built AI that could reach everything a company knows and act on it, through a lot of twists and turns, until Elixirr acquired us in September 2023.

    Lesson: Conviction about the future only matters if you can get people to act on it.

    Skill: Getting AI adopted inside enterprises

  12. 2021: The Mandate

    While we were building Responsum, The Mandate emerged: conversations with men about masculinity, their mental and emotional health, and what it takes to hold space for that.

    Lesson: Saying the hard thing first gives everyone else permission.

    Skill: Holding space for honesty

    Watch The Mandate

  13. 2024: The Adam Experiment

    A newsletter and podcast about integration, and my belief that success comes from being your true self and working on what lights you up. I explored with different people what that looked like for them, and doubled down on who I am.

    Lesson: Success comes from leaning into who you actually are, not away from it.

    Skill: Bringing all of me to the work

    Read The Adam Experiment

  14. Now: Partner at Elixirr

    After the acquisition I became a Partner at Elixirr, leading AI transformation, and in 2023 we moved to Seattle. It's where I get to bring all of this together for clients: seeing where things are going, placing bets, and getting technology adopted by real people inside real organizations.

    Lesson: Nothing I learned along the way was wasted.

    Skill: Bringing it all together

    How I think about it

  15. 2026: PSBL

    I wanted space to explore this future out loud, and to share the stories I've mostly kept to myself. This moment has real downside, and I think far more upside. PSBL is where we work out how to navigate it together.

    Lesson: AI can help us tap into our own superpowers at a scale we've never had. That's the possibility.

    Skill: Helping people see what's possible

    Read PSBL

Same instinct. Bigger rooms.

It started with suction cups and a plunger. Then a darkroom, a campus, startups, companies, and now anyone who wants to follow along. The question hasn't changed: what becomes possible when we use new technology to be more of who we are?

Things I love.