I help founders and leaders see what comes next—for the company and for themselves.
Entrepreneur. Investor. First believer. Author.
I’ve spent my career building companies, backing people before consensus and zagging when the expected path didn’t make sense. Today, I advise a small number of founders and leaders at consequential moments.
I’m also writing, speaking, building software and creating places to think—different expressions of the same belief: technology and ambition should expand a human life, not consume it.
Voodoo Ventures is the history behind this work. I’m not currently making new investments or accepting pitches.
Criticism is easy to find. First believers are not.
When Patrick Comer returned to New Orleans to build Lucid, plenty of investors told him no. I wrote the first check, and Lucid went on to become New Orleans’s first unicorn and was acquired for $1.1 billion.
The outcome mattered. The deeper lesson mattered more: one credible believer can give you room to become what you already see.
That is still the role I know how to play.
When I’m useful.
The hardest decisions rarely fit neatly into a board deck. Sometimes the company is at an inflection point. Sometimes you are.
You can see something other people can’t.
You need a first believer who will also tell you the truth.
The old playbook no longer works.
AI, the market or the company has changed—and the conventional answer feels wrong.
The company is working. The life around it isn’t.
You want to keep building without losing the person, relationships and meaning that made any of it worthwhile.
I work with younger founders learning to trust an uncommon vision and experienced leaders deciding what the next chapter requires. Age is not the filter. Agency is.
I advise. You operate.
You don’t need to raise hundreds of millions of dollars to build the success you want. You need clarity, high agency, an unrelenting pursuit and the willingness to take strong, calculated risks. My advice is hard-earned and lived—not assembled from Forbes articles.
Different forms. Same conviction.
Speaking
I speak and teach about AI, agency and the good life; building a company without postponing your life; the power of the first believer; and what comes after success. The formats range from keynotes and fireside conversations to executive sessions, founder gatherings and intimate events.
Building
I still build software. Right now that includes the Analog Reunion ticketing platform, Launch Pad Foundation’s fiscal-sponsorship platform and AI-assisted operational systems. The point is not technology for its own sake. It is to give small teams and community organizations more agency and more time for the work that matters. AI has made this one of the most creatively interesting periods of my career.
Gatherings
From time to time, Anne and I host intimate experiences in Healdsburg and at Casa Del Arte in Todos Santos: walking, nature, meals, music and long conversations about work, creativity and the life around them.
Technology should return time, agency and human connection—not consume them.
You don’t have to follow the playbook.
The obvious path isn’t the only one. I’ve built my career by seeing around corners, pursuing ideas before they were obvious and being willing to go when other people said it would not work.
To me, high agency is not relentless productivity. It is the ability to strip away expectations, decide what matters and build a company—and a life—on your own terms.
Strong risks. Calculated, not careless.
The book
Agency. Joy. Meaning.
I spent five years writing Analog to understand the question beneath all the companies, investments and turns in my life: What does it mean to live well—and why wait?
Analog is the worldview behind this work. Build agency so you have your hands on the wheel. Maximize for happiness instead of postponing joy. Find meaning in the people you lift up and the life you are building now.
The book is the philosophy. The work is where I put it into practice.
A few companies I’ve believed in.
NOLA → LAGOS → HEALDSBURG
Innovation is everywhere. Talent is everywhere. Opportunity is not confined to the coasts.
- Lucid
- Flutterwave
- The 86 Company
- Neighborland
- Research Defender
- Microtraction
Notes from the uncommon path.
I write about investing, agency, AI, joy, meaning and what it takes to build a life well lived.
- Two types of investors: Engineers vs. Financiers
Some investors provide capital. Others help build the engine.
- How to be great at investing
Fourteen years of investing, what worked, what didn’t and why I stepped away.
- Analog, here’s what my book is about
The original articulation of agency, meaning and joy that became the book.
- Why Community Matters, and the Power of First Believers
On giving first, finding your people and being someone’s first believer.
- What Are We Losing as Life Moves Online?
As more of life moves online, what do we want to carry forward on purpose?
What are you navigating?
If you’re facing a decision, bringing people together or building something that could give people more agency, send me a candid note about what is at stake and why it matters now.
Tell me what’s at stake