A view of mountains, because business should be an adventure.

The Accidental Entrepreneur

My career started with a paradox: I was trained to see markets as rational, efficient, and predictable, yet the things I built succeeded precisely because they weren’t.

I studied finance at UVA, learning how to model markets and value assets. But even back then, something felt off. The models worked with assumptions of perfect knowledge and regularity. They optimized for transactional efficiency but ignored the slight (read, obvious and major) chance of chaos, entropy, asymmetry, psychology, and structural change having something to do with business. I was suspicious and rightly so. It turns out, this stuff shapes almost all of business.

So, I did what every reasonable finance student approachiing graduation would do: I launched a preppy t-shirt company with pockets that turned into paisley squares.

(Yes, really. It was called Rugby Road Shirts, and for a brief moment in time, frat guys (who lived on Rugby Road in Charlottesville) loved it, and it spread to greek organizations throughout the South.)

I didn’t start a business. I started a way for people to tell themselves a better story. Turns out, that’s the only thing anyone’s really buying. It also turns out building things was a lot more fun than my finance internship.

Homesick Candles: The Smell of Memory

The best businesses don’t start with a product—they start with a feeling. Homesick Candles, my first project after school, wasn’t just about candles. It was about nostalgia, belonging, and the weirdly powerful connection between scent and memory.

The idea seemed ridiculous at first—"We’ll sell candles that smell like places." But within months, it was clear: people weren’t just buying candles. They were buying millions of dollars worth of childhood summers, old apartments, road trips, and homecomings.

A great product doesn’t introduce itself. It reminds you of something eternal, a version of something that will be needed no matter the year or even the century for that matter.

The Business World is Wrong About Growth

After Homesick, I started seeing patterns everywhere—why some businesses scaled while others plateaued, why certain products became cult favorites while others fizzled out.

The traditional business world treats growth like a linear equation: more marketing, more sales, more revenue. But real growth doesn’t work like that. It’s exponential, network-driven, and shaped by feedback loops that most people don’t even notice, powered by a deep understanding of human nature. The best businesses make this understand explicit, and spend much of their time learn more about customers and their needs. If a business lacks such understanding or can't grow without a constant IV drip of ads, there's probably something fundamentally wrong.

Growth isn’t about doing more. It’s about 1. making sure more doesn’t kill you and 2, making sure your products embed a greater understanding of your customer than anyone else.

Experiments, Disruptions, and the Art of Not Taking It Too Seriously

Between growing brands and working with Fortune 500s, I’ve launched projects that make no sense on paper. Like emoji pool floats. Like 3D-printed cheese guns (yes, functional).

Most of the best ideas start as jokes. The trick is knowing which ones aren’t.

What I’m Doing Now

These days, I help businesses think in systems, not spreadsheets. I’ve led growth at Thursday Boots, was a founding member of BuzzFeed’s product division, and have advised brands ranging from Starbucks and GE to private equity firms and countless consumer brands.

I help companies untangle problems in strategy, marketing, product, team building, and hiring—learning as much from them as they do from me.

My work is about designing for emergence, helping businesses figure out:

Every business is just a handshake agreement between business team members, customers, and the community about what matters. The ones that last keep rewriting — and sweetening — the deal.

So, Why Reach Out?

If you’re trying to build something that doesn’t just make money, but changes how people think, behave, or connect, we should probably talk.

If you want to understand the psychology of why people actually buy things, I can help.

If you’re trying to create a business or, even better, a dynamical system that thrives in uncertainty instead of fearing it, let’s figure it out.

If you already know exactly what you need, you don’t need me. If you’re questioning what game you’re even playing, let’s talk.

Drop me a line. Worst case? We have an interesting conversation.