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.
Burning Man for Builders.
A Missile Test in the Mojave by a 20-year-old Poses the Question: How Safe is Safe Enough?
Society will always tell us there’s no such thing as safe enough. We will add more and more sensors, cameras and lidar to things that drive themselves, while news headlines rage of man failing machine, machine failing man. We put in airbags and then a switch to deactivate them.
At 12,500 feet, having just crossed the Sierra’s in a small plane with my dad, today I’m thinking about how poorly equipped the human mind is at understanding real versus perceived threat.
