About
Back in the day...
When I was a kid, my heroes were Tony Hawk and Frank Lloyd Wright. I studied architecture throughout high school and for a few semesters at Arizona State, but left to study graphic design back in Chicago.
I was learning more on my own than I was at school, so I left to continue on that path. In about a year's time I was supporting myself with freelance print work, and less than a year after that, I landed my first full-time job at a small agency.
Post-salad days...
After two years of agency life, I started a one-man design shop out of my apartment. I eventually moved my company into a small office shared with some friends who, besides being freelance programmers, had a small online tee-shirt project on the side called Threadless.
By 2004, Threadless had outpaced our client business, and it was way more fun to work on. We decided to let all our clients go, I officially joined skinnyCorp, and Threadless became a full-time job for all of us.
I spent nearly seven years at skinnyCorp focused on overall creative direction and product development/strategy for Threadless. During my time there, we built the company from a profitable side-project into a multi-million dollar brand with an active, thriving online-community of over a million tee shirt and design enthusiasts.
The company’s success afforded us the opportunity to speak all over the world, have our business model become a Harvard Business School case study, and even land us on the cover of INC Magazine.
After Threadless, I worked at Digg as Director of Design & User Experience (2009-2010), and then was VP of Product at SimpleGeo (acquired by Urban Airship, 2010-2011). In the fall of 2011, I joined the founding team of a new startup based in San Francisco as the Head of Product & Design.
These days...
I live in San Francisco with my wife and our two cats, Murder and BlueGeorgeMichael (Blue for short).
My wife and I actually went to the same high school, and while we were friends, we never dated. We lost touch after high school, but reconnected years later. Thank you, Facebook.
She works in the [REDACTED] field, so she prefers to keep her personal life offline as much as possible. This helps me keep perspective of normal people’s sharing habits online, which I very much appreciate.
I like scary movies, unpopular music, and weird food. I also collect books I’ll someday read, buy shoes I’ll someday wear, and come up with ideas I’ll someday work on (or give away).
I also enjoy spending free time mentoring and advising startups.