12 Months in Review
2023 Recap and 2024 Interests
Over the last few years, I’ve written year-end reflections (2020, 2021, 2022).
2023 brought our second kid (Nellie), a new venture (Schematic), my brother’s engagement to Marie, and the slow re-entry into exercise and sports after a couple of years off.
Here’s the recap…
A new person
In April ‘23, Mary Howard gave birth to our second kid, Nellie.
She just turned 1, and Van just turned 3. Nellie is in the totally adorable stage, and Van is in the totally unpredictable stage, though yes, still adorable.
A new company
After two years operating at Automox, I co-founded Schematic with Ben, Jas, & and Gio. We’ve worked together for most of the last 9 years across a variety of venture-backed SaaS companies.
In December, I wrote a post about the first 6 months of building Schematic… how we’d approached & what we’d learned…
There are plenty of additional learnings we’ve picked up over the last 5 months, but I’ll save those for another post soon.
The only comment for now is a quick nod to a quote that I’ve found resonant: “there is a tremendous amount of craftsmanship between an idea and a great product."Everyday, I’m impressed by the craft of my co-founders, our colleagues, our customers, & our investors.
An engagement
In November, Mary Howard and I flew to LA. My brother Ry was planning on surprising his girlfriend Marie by proposing to her in front of all of their friends at their annual chili cook off.
Though Marie had explicitly directed Ry never to propose at the chili cook off (an annual tradition of theirs for the last several years), Ry dropped onto one knee in front of fifty friends and asked Marie to make him the “spiciest man alive.”
A new hobby
Historically, most of my physical life has been dedicated to soccer and long-distance running. From time to time, I’ve gotten into stints of cycling, but over the last year, cycling has played a big role in my re-entry to exercise after an extended hiatus.
I have a couple of friends in Atlanta to thank for this — one who has gotten me into gravel riding, as well as riding in the pre-dawn when the car traffic is light, and another who has outfitted our family with hand-me-down kids cycling equipment, making it easy for the family to get out on neighborhood rides together.
Limited by the Unnoticed in 2024
With recap now written, onto Limited by the Unnoticed in 2024.
Last year, I assumed that my writing would lend itself more toward company building topics that I’d be thinking about every day as we work to build Schematic.
I had hoped to write about some of the following:
Pricing & packaging — why so many founders struggle with this lever
LLMs — how we’re leveraging as we build our startup
Design partnerships — collaborative building with folks who believe in the problem
Customer selection — putting theory to work in the pursuit of customers who can pull vision forward
Outside of the Observations on Building Schematic post back in December, I didn’t get to any of these with dedicated posts, though I did do a lot of writing on Linkedin about pricing & packaging, enterprise software systems, & design partnerships.
Over the next year, I have low confidence that I’ll have much time for extracurricular writing, but if & when inspiration strikes, I hope to consider some of these topics:
LLMs — how we’re leveraging as we build our startup
Placemaking — how places, especially town centers get developed
Geopolitics — how geopolitics evolve based on alternate views of history
Foxholes — the viability of foxholes at scale
Startups — what we’re learning
National Histories — summaries of the national histories of a handful of countries
Great review! Keep it rolling 🙌