Sixteenshots on goal
Companies I started, joined early, or ran, between 2007 and 2024. Eight of them are dead. That is the interesting part.
The record at a glance
- Mail Shoppe 2007 · Shut Down Mail Shoppe, 2007, Shut Down
- InTicketing 2008 · Parted Ways InTicketing, 2008, Parted Ways
- Eventbrite 2009 · IPO Eventbrite, 2009, IPO
- Air Bulgarian 2010 · Shut Down Air Bulgarian, 2010, Shut Down
- Meme Defense 2012 · Shut Down Meme Defense, 2012, Shut Down
- Rentify 2013 · Parted Ways Rentify, 2013, Parted Ways
- Shortcut 2014 · Shut Down Shortcut, 2014, Shut Down
- 17hats 2015 · Parted Ways 17hats, 2015, Parted Ways
- Casting Call Club 2015 · Active Casting Call Club, 2015, Active
- CastHappy 2016 · Shut Down CastHappy, 2016, Shut Down
- Superscribers 2016 · Shut Down Superscribers, 2016, Shut Down
- Fortuna 2016 · Shut Down Fortuna, 2016, Shut Down
- Reforge 2017 · Series A Reforge, 2017, Series A
- Closing Credits 2021 · Active Closing Credits, 2021, Active
- Neoniva 2022 · Shut Down Neoniva, 2022, Shut Down
- Videomancy 2024 · Active Videomancy, 2024, Active
- IPO & Series A · 2
- Active · 3
- Parted ways · 3
- Shut down · 8
Background check
Building companies and being goofy about it
I am greatly interested in building companies. You won’t find my name in many TechCrunch articles though, as I’m mostly a work-in-the-shadows kind of person. Here’s my highlight reel:
- I was the 10th employee at Eventbrite ($EB:NYSE), going from a $4M valuation to $700M.
- I was the founding engineer at Reforge, going from ~$0 valuation to 9 figures.
- I founded Shortcut, raising $1M after completing Techstars. Failed though. Still hurts.
- I have two bootstrapped side projects: Casting Call Club, which just hit 500k users, and Closing Credits, which will probably hit $500k ARR in its first year.
- I’m an angel investor. Some public ones that went big: Synthetix, Hifi Finance, Zilliqa, Harmony, Kraken. (See a trend?)
If I’m usually the man behind the curtain, why write a blog?
Why the blog
The serious side of dad jokes
The people who worked with me at these companies know me as a comedian, sometimes even aloof. “Quit your job immediately if you don’t have fun doing it,” I always tell people, typically when they’re just about to be fired.
Anyway,
I have a problem. I struggle putting myself out there. Half way through a sentence I realize the absurdity of trying to change someone else’s mind. Years of this has led me to slowly lose my ability to crystalize ideas in front of others. Therefore, this blog is really just for me. It’s a big exercise to relearn public influence.
If you tell a joke and no one laughs but you, either the content or the delivery was bad. I know from my career history that I’ve got pretty good content.
But let me tell you, my delivery needs a midwife.
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