Ventures
Actionworks: Education company that builds entrepreneurship and innovation programs for the U.S. Department of State, Intel, the University of Texas, and dozens more. Built a wrapper with GPT-2 only have it obviated by ChatGPT.
Minimum Viable Video: Cohort-based course teaching how to make videos to get customers, connections, and capital.
Coaching: I help founders, engineers, and tech workers become more successful around business and video.
(Previously) 3 Day Startup: 10-year CEO journey scaling an entrepreneurship bootcamp to 50 countries.
Personal
- My fiancé and I (and her ridiculous cats) split our time between Austin, TX and Savannah, GA
- Interests: LLMs, Formula 1, Mexican food, Alvvays, Nolan films, cognitive scientist Donald Hoffman’s theory of reality, Longhorn football
- I’m 5 years deep into writing a from-the-trenches newsletter of stories and tips on entrepreneurship, AI, and video
- I’ve had a hell of a lot easier time building companies than figuring out vulnerability; that came with Personal Boards of Directors
I manage a mysterious health condition—maybe you’ll be the one to diagnose it?RESOLVED!
Contact
DM me on Twitter or email me at my name at actionworks dot co (not dot com).
Blog
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The first thing your customers see
I spent a week in Boston working with founders at Intel’s Ignite program, a corporate accelerator that helps deep tech startups find product/market fit and sell to enterprise. My role was to help these founders attract more customers and investors through video. I wrote this so people not in Intel’s program could benefit from what we covered.
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How I Go From Idea to Filming
A write up of my low effort, no scriptwriting, no memorization workflow for how I generate ideas and get them to where I’m ready to talk about them on camera.
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I Got Taken for a Ride in India
And it was totally worth it. I knew my trip to India was going to get weird when I got a stomach bug before I landed at Indira Gandhi International Airport. Frankly, it was a win to cross that distance without causing an international incident in the airplane lavatory.
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The Upside of Getting Screwed Over
I’m an advisor to a company that makes beef jerky. The founders are Bolivian and their product has done well down there…but the market is small. They relocated the business to Texas and I’ve been helping them get the business in motion. One of the founders shared a story that I can’t stop thinking about…
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Where Nobody Wants You to Become a Millionaire
A “one that got away” shady business deal in Russia…Nine years ago, a colleague-of-a-colleague had a connection to someone who worked under Putin. Putin wanted to beef up Russia’s economic presence in the East as a hedge against the West’s global business dominance. Putin had selected Vladivostok—a port city abutting China and the Pacific—as the next big thing for Russian entrepreneurship.
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Ask For More
MBAs, psychopaths, and natural-born salespeople are experts at making the big ask. A position outside of their experience level, the phone number of someone out of their league, free guac at Chipotle, things that others would never consider possible, they do with aplomb.