You have a product bet, a hard organizational choice, or a story that isn't holding up under scrutiny. We work through it together: challenge the assumptions, then turn the answer into action.
I work with founders, executives and investors across strategy, business design and capital. I've co-founded a marketplace, led business design at IDEO, and worked inside AT&T and American Express.
Engagements from $5,000 a month. One active request at a time.
Talk through a decision30 minutes. Bring the question you're trying to answer.
Twice, a company has seconded its own executives to a design team I led. Both times, the work became a new part of the business.
2018-19 · Six months · London, New York, Asia
A four-phase engagement on the future of news, sponsored by the CEO. Eight Dow Jones executives - from marketing, operations, technology and finance - joined my design team. The outcome: a new internal division built on knowledge graphs, repurposing news and data across the business. Several team members were promoted off the back of the work.
[Same shape: client executives seconded to a design team I led, ending in a new subsidiary or division. Details to come.]
A specialty coffee brand built from scratch: roasted to order in the Hudson Valley, sold through a shop designed for AI agents to buy from.
Client work for a boutique operator of luxury residences. Airbnb funnels people to a place; this funnels people to an outcome: women traveling to Medellín for IVF or egg freezing get the trip set up around the treatment, and the client's properties get the guests. The demand side is built the honest way: showing up in the communities where those women already ask questions, with the affiliation disclosed.
Email a one-paragraph pitch, get back a draft seed deck in ten slides. A live experiment in where AI drafting helps and where it doesn't.
More than 140 essays since April 2025 on judgment, taste and markets.
A 12-week visceral-fat plan for South Asian men, with paying users.
A product or AI idea needs a customer, business-model and adoption test. You get the assumptions, the cheapest useful experiment, and a go or no-go view.
The argument is clear but the organization isn't moving. You get the choices, incentives and decision rights that need to change.
The deck sounds plausible but the logic needs pressure. You get a stronger narrative, its weak points, and the questions to prepare for.
High-stakes CFO drama during and after the dot-com era.
Insider: global travel economics.
Led business design, helping large organizations think and act like entrepreneurs.
The world's first Airbnb for cars.
Media; family offices; 40+ countries.
Skin in the game: I manage my own portfolio across long-short equities, options and alternatives.
Senior AI design consultant on a multi-year oral history archive for the Sing Sing Prison Museum, with UConn's i3 lab.
Unlimited requests. One at a time.
Strategy questions, product ideas, investor decks, thorny org issues, market hypotheses. Send as many as you like.
When I'm on your request, you get my full attention and two decades across corporates, startups, design and investing.
We agree what you'll get back, and when, before work begins. No open-ended engagements.
You'll always know what I'm doing and what you'll get back. No mystery, no black-box consulting.
Clearer choices. Explicit assumptions. A next step you can act on.
One you can actually repeat and act on.
With articulated assumptions you can test, not vague conviction.
For boards, investors, or customers. Tailored to sound like you, enriched by lived experience.
Fewer circular debates. More clarity on what actually needs to be optimized.
A confidential, experienced brain in the loop on the hard questions.
Limited to a small number of clients, so there's room for real thinking and ongoing context, not just calendar slots.
Over time I learn your market, your team, your history and your patterns. Each request gets faster, deeper and more useful. Part of the fam rather than a transactional advisor.
Engagements from $5,000 a month. Pause anytime - our relationship is forever.
Three essays from Pulp Conversations:
What are customers choosing once the capability is good enough?
Whose time horizon is driving this choice?
How do you judge the people you invest with?
I also consider full-time roles with the right team. Find me on LinkedIn.