Turned the parts of speech into characters while teaching 7th grade. Raised $900K+. 2.5M downloads, 10M views, still running, now pivoting toward AI-powered writing built around the same cast.
$ cat /startups # founded 3 · sold 1 · running the first
Startups
Everybody knows that theatre majors make the best startup founders.
A video game studio hired a novelist to start a publishing house. Comics, novels, a Sienkiewicz monograph introduced by Neil Gaiman, museum co-publications. Distributed worldwide through Ingram.
Pivoted from game infrastructure to Quest Commerce: gamified loyalty where customers earn and complete challenges tied to purchases. Series Seed, CDL Montreal, live customers. Acquired by LISNR, January 2025.
Partnership architecture across transit in India, Colombia, Spain, Singapore; US fueling and fleet; enterprise auth; retail media. Leading two products: Quest (the platform I built) and Radius (data over inaudible audio, 131+ patents).
The thread isn't hard to trace: design the experience well enough and people forget they're being taught something, or sold something. They just participate.