About — the long version
I can't leave
broken things alone.
Cursed, some might say, to always notice when something could be better. I see the flaw, picture the better version, and then I have to build it.
The throughline
Restoration.
My attention is full of broken things and the better versions of them. A website with a confusing path through it. A restaurant menu that is probably hurting sales. An old hand plane gone to rust. The fix is half-built in my head before I've even had a chance to take it all in.
Most of what I do for fun is restoration. Vintage game systems, old tools, cars, art with found materials. Even the things I watch and read are other people taking something neglected and making it whole again. It isn't a hobby so much as the way I'm wired.
American Winery Guide is that instinct, pointed at a business. I bought a dead ~20-year-old domain, cleared out the four thousand listings that had rotted or turned to spam, and brought seven thousand wineries back to life. The thing I do to relax is almost exactly how I built the product I am most proud of.
So the maker at the workbench and the product leader at the keyboard aren't two different people. They're one person doing one thing in different materials: find what's neglected, see what it could be, and put in the work to get it there.
An expert in people
Every job I've taken has dropped me into an industry I knew nothing about. Events and registration, then surveys, then observability, now wine and ERP software. I've never led with domain expertise, because it has never been the point. What I'm expert in is people: what they're trying to get done, where a product fights them, and how to make a thing feel obvious. That transfers everywhere, which is why being a generalist is so important.
The other uncommon part is how much of the stack I cover myself: strategy, research, design, development, customer success. Twenty years in, and I'm still building with my hands, not just directing from a deck. I'd rather understand a thing by building it than supervise it from a comfortable distance.
How I work
01
Active optimist
I can focus on the good outcome not all the ways it won't work, and that's exactly what makes the grind to get there feel worth it. I'd rather put in the work and prove the pessimists wrong than sit back and hope it sorts itself out.
02
The long game
I see the finished thing early and tend to run a few steps ahead of where we actually are. Part of the work is stopping to help people connect the dots and see that vision along with me.
03
People-first
I love the front of a project most: the whiteboarding, the messy beginning, talking a problem through until it clicks. I'm an extrovert who likes building consensus and watching people grow into more than they expected.
"[Dan] has a way of bringing all voices and ideas to the table, making people feel heard."
— Nell Gable, Executive Communications, Splunk & Cisco
What I'm after now
After a long stretch inside big companies, the thing I've learned about myself is that I need to feel the dent I'm making. I do my best work close to the ground, in smaller teams and founder-shaped roles, where one person can visibly move the needle and the distance between deciding something and watching it ship stays short. The gap between deciding something and watching it exist has never been shorter. The tools have changed. The itch hasn't.