About.
I'm a pilot, writer and headhunter. I build the early teams of companies commonly associated with the so-called PayPal mafia. I'm the son of a professional smuggler and a Mormon school teacher. From them I learned to tell stories, write about people and live at the intersection of big ideas, talent and crazed persistence. I live in San Francisco but spend summers flying off a dirt airstrip in Idaho. As a back-country bush pilot, I like the metaphor of delivering special people to hard to reach places.
A note.
I do not support much of an online presence. In place of social media, I use this site as a personal and professional forum to discuss things I’m working on or are interested in. It’s meant to be raw and unfiltered.
I am a pilot and regularly publish on Substack and AirFacts using aviation as an excuse to talk about mindfulness and the challenges associated with modern life. About once a year I also put together a short video together with my good friend ET at Raineduponmedia as a way to connect my paper-pushing life to my analog hobbies.
Connection versus Connections.
Now that we have reached 8 billion people, how do we find one another?
I fly a small plane between a cabin on the central coast and a cabin I’m building in the mountains of Idaho. This contrast is not unlike my two professions, as a backcountry bush pilot and a headhunter. Where commercial aviation delivers the masses, and private aviation the elite, I think of flying a small plane as delivering unique people to hard to reach places.
Titans
When Palantir was a company of less than 300 people, I was asked to build a list of possible advisors. The company had in fact leveraged a future board seat to FoundersFund if they did not manage to add at least one person from each of the following, a rather obscure list:
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a long standing senator;
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a Fortune 100 CEO;
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a globally recognized talent agent;
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a founder of three public companies;
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the mastermind of the Bin Laden raid.
