Startups, mental health, and my attempts to lead a fulfilling life

When I was a junior in college I started a company with two of my best friends. We grew it to 10 team members and over $1M in revenue before selling it to GreyNoise Intelligence in June of 2022.

Clients loved me:

"Andrew is a pompous penny pinching hipster with funny socks." -former NSA analyst and client

I spent a year working at GreyNoise, first as the interim product leader and then as a product manager. While there I helped to rebuild their product team, hired an experienced VP of Product, implemented a new pricing model, and managed the development of multiple complex, technical features.

I love startups because I love learning about new domains, working with interesting people, and coming up with creative solutions to challenging problems. I also love the freedom, autonomy, and ownership that come from building a startup.

I'm currently taking a sabbatical and taking some time to decide what I want to do next.

When it comes to free time, I'm MOSTLY rock climbing, backpacking, or hanging out with my partner and our two cats.

I'm not a morning person.

But I did once spent two nights on an island with no food.

Different island

I love to...

🍳 Cook for friends

πŸ“š Read a good fantasy novel

πŸ§—β€β™‚οΈ Climb (mostly artificial) rocks

πŸ“Ί Watch romantic comedies

πŸ“Έ Take photos of people & places

😸 Spend time with my cats Po Boy and Stevie

πŸ‘¨β€πŸ’» Build products and teams

I'm working on...

🧠 My mental health (thanks to lots of therapy)

πŸ“ Writing

πŸ₯Ύ Getting outside more

I am obnoxiously opinionated, but most of my opinions are loosely held. At the moment I passionately believe that...

  • Balance is the key to life.
  • We have a responsibility to lift up those around us.
  • Great management is the only way to build great companies.
  • Agile isn’t the only way to build products (but it is the best way most of the time)
  • Capitalism has a lot of flaws, but is better than any other system we've found yet.
  • People are mostly good and the world is better today than it ever has been.
  • Dark mode is overrated.
  • If you have to use tooltips to guide users through your onboarding process your onboarding sucks.
  • You can never have too many lists.

To learn more of my story, you can find a list of interviews and guest posts here.

Footnote: This site is my personal playground.

I feel more fulfilled when I'm regularly creating and sharing the things I create with people. This site should help me do that.

I have no strategy for it, no marketing plan. I am optimizing for personal fulfillment rather than profits. Although that too, may change in the future. Strategy, marketing and profits can all be fun.

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