12 Months in Review
2024 Recap and 2025 Interests
Over the last few years, I’ve written year-end reflections (2020, 2021, 2022, 2023).
2024 was a year of growth—for our kids, for Schematic, and for our family. It was also a year of adventure, deeper AI integration into daily life, and a move.
Here’s the recap…
Kids
As we close out 2024, Nellie and Van are nearly 2 and 4, and their personalities are coming into focus.
Van loves to run, is obsessed with dinosaurs, and has become our family DJ in the car—confidently (and sometimes aggressively) dictating what we listen to. His current favorites:
U2 – Beautiful Day
Bleachers – Tiny Moves
Toby Keith – Should’ve Been a Cowboy
Counting Crows – Mr. Jones
Nellie is adding more words to her vocabulary (cheese, baby, mommy, daddy, duck, chicken) and is starting to demonstrate that she’s outgoing by nature. She’s always the first one down the big slide at the park, while Van watches carefully to make sure it’s safe before following.
Startup
2024 was a big year for Schematic.
In March, our initial design partners started using the product in production. Since we’re building infrastructure that helps companies manage and monetize their features, our biggest early risk was whether we could build something good enough to be trusted in production. Hitting that milestone was huge.
From there:
We raised a seed round in April/May.
The business turned 1 in June.
We launched our public beta in late September.
We expanded the team, hiring six developers who’ve had a major impact on the product and our pace of execution—and who are also great humans.
By the end of the year, our product was being used and trusted by a cohort of great software startups, and usage intensity was increasing meaningfully.
As I reflect on 2024, I feel a ton of gratitude for our customers—for their trust, their feedback, and the opportunity to be in constant dialogue with them in Slack, where we’re iterating together on how to make Schematic better.
Looking Ahead to 2025
Startups face enormous challenges around pricing & packaging, and it’s extremely exciting to think about what Schematic can do to help—especially in this era.
I’ve thought a lot about the idea that the best businesses are the most agile businesses. To me, that means they can see the present clearly and adapt to it rapidly.
In a world where startups can scale to $100M ARR in 12 months with a 20-person team, this has never been more true. When I think about what I want Schematic to be for our customers, I get really excited by the idea that it’s a tool that helps them iterate at the speed of their own ambition.
I was recently on a call with a VP of Product at a fast-growing AI startup that has been trialing Schematic. I asked him why they intended to use the product. His response:
"All of the features we prioritize should impact growth. And we need the tooling to deliver on this. We’re launching a ton of features, and with you guys, I can deploy and roll out features, run time-bound trials, bundle and unbundle, manage overrides, get feedback and engagement, test paywalls, and build tight feedback loops on business impact. I think this is where everything is headed for product developers given the pace of our industry.”
That’s exactly the kind of business we want to support.
Adventures
2024 built on the momentum of 2023—I returned to racing and took on some real adventures. Here are a few highlights:
First trail race in years – A half-marathon in Monteagle, TN, near Sewanee. My dad came with me. The Cumberland Plateau in spring is pretty wonderful.
Twilight with Mary Howard – A 60-mile bike race through rolling farmland near Athens, GA. I missed a turn, which added ~15 extra miles—much to MH’s annoyance.
First-ever gravel race – With a good friend, who introduced me to gravel riding, we took on the Belgian Waffle, a 70-mile, 7,000+ ft elevation race in the NC mountains. The waffles at mile 40 were the best I’ve ever had.
Rafting with the kids – A surprise lightning storm turned a casual float down the Toccoa into a long, hard day—including a two-mile hitchhike at the end. A day I’ll never forget. Nellie, Van, MH, and my mom were troopers.
Riding with Ry in the Tetons – My favorite place in the US, so riding into them at 6 a.m. was special.
Hiking the Indian Peaks – A friend and I biked into the Indian Peaks Wilderness, locked up the bikes, and spent the day climbing & scrambling across a lot of scree.
The embeddedness of the LLMs
I started using ChatGPT & other LLMs as soon as they launched, but in 2024, LLMs became fully embedded in my daily life.
Everyday, I am amazed at their utility. Everyday, I find myself saying, “I cannot believe this is possible.”
I now use them constantly throughout the day across use cases like the below:
Customer support → Built a GPT with all of our docs, support tickets, and customer questions to help handle inbound support and customer questions.
Podcast post-production → Created a GPT trained on transcripts from 50+ podcast episodes with founders, SaaS product leaders, and pricing experts. It generates summaries, launch copy, and social posts.
Writing & editing → Emails, social media marketing, blog articles, and more.
Research → Market analysis, competitive intelligence, vendor evaluations.
DIY → Everything from setting up a bike trainer to fun games with toddlers.
Coding → Building apps using Cursor and GPT. The capabilities still blow my mind.
Thought partnering & sparring → Built a custom GPT called Sparring Partner to debate ideas and pressure-test priorities.
The Rockies
In early November, we moved from Georgia to Colorado.
Leaving Atlanta & the Southeast was bittersweet. We spent six years there, have an amazing community of friends, are deeply invested in the startup ecosystem and a project in North Georgia, and love the Southeast. I travel back regularly for work, and of course, our families are in Chattanooga, so the Southeast will always be home.
The move wasn’t easy at first. We arrived to an early snowstorm, and for weeks, Van was in full-on revolt. He still says, “I miss our Atlanta house.”
Nellie, on the other hand, took it in stride.
By the holidays, we were feeling settled, and I started pushing my running to gears I hadn’t reached in years. There are a lot of fast mountain athletes out here.
Limited by the Unnoticed in 2025
With recap now written, onto Limited by the Unnoticed in 2025.
Since founding Schematic, I’ve done almost no extracurricular writing. I don’t expect that to change in ‘25, but I’ll still try.
Here are a few topics I hope to explore—many unchanged from last year:
Chronic Autoimmune Diseases → How wearables might evolve for better prediction, diagnosis, and treatment.
LLMs → How we’re leveraging them while building Schematic.
Schematic → What we’re learning.
Placemaking → How town centers get developed.
Geopolitics → How different historical perspectives shape global trends.
Foxholes → The viability of foxholes at scale.