A little more
The longer version. I've been in tech since the 1990s. A big part of that time went into open standards and governance: the Web Standards Project in the early 2000s, work around the IANA/ICANN transition, schema.org, and the Solid Project from 2016 to 2020. I've also worked in policy, down to the township level.
I spent about four years at Amazon. Two were on Seller Central, building next-generation tools for small and medium sellers. The other two were with corporate business development, mostly creating business ideas and product plans for Amazon's top-level domains (with a little M&A evaluation along the way). I've been in ecommerce for about eleven years.
At Gierd my work is product vision, priorities, connecting customer needs to what we build, and lining product direction up with go-to-market and the economics of our customers' businesses. The problem is simple to say and hard to solve: a brand selling across many marketplaces can't make confident decisions when its information is fragmented and its financial picture is incomplete.
I've started and led several companies and teams. I'm writing a book, Breathe: A Practitioner's Guide to Organizational Health. It isn't published yet. I'm a member of the Agentic AI Foundation.
I grew up in the 1980s on a dairy farm, taking apart and rebuilding electronics in the old chicken coop. In the early 1990s I moved to the Big Island of Hawaii. In the late 1990s I settled in the Seattle area, got married and started a family, and lived there about 25 years. About five years ago I moved onto my great-grandfather's farm near New Auburn, Wisconsin.
What I'm doing now
I co-founded Gierd. I've asked an interim CEO to run the company for a stretch so I can focus where I'm strongest: product and technology.
Right now my attention is on a few things.
Making operational data lead to action. Marketplace sellers have to reconcile activity across channels, financial systems and operational tools. I want leaders to understand what's happening across their business, where they're making money, and which action to take next. Software should move past passive reporting into clear operational workflows.
Intent-Led Engineering. Gierd's engineers each lead teams of AI agents. We don't run scrum or sprints. I'm writing a position paper arguing that this is the methodology that comes after Waterfall and Agile, and that the new bottleneck is stating requirements and outcomes clearly.
Verification. Automation in marketplaces is easy to start and hard to trust. I think verification is the real bottleneck, and I talk about it publicly.
AI as infrastructure. I treat AI as foundational infrastructure, not a utility. I care about open standards and community as the way to keep it safe and scalable. I'm also exploring how AI can help people retrieve relevant knowledge and turn an unclear problem into a useful outcome. I prefer tools that solve a real problem over demos that just look impressive.
I'm also running a monthly live interview series with outside experts in marketplaces, ecommerce, software and AI.
What I'm good at
These are drawn from things I've actually done. I'd still call this a draft.
Turning messy data into a shared language. My standards work (schema.org, Solid) and Gierd's core technology, the Gierd Unified Schema, are the same instinct. Get everyone describing things the same way and a lot of downstream pain goes away.
Positioning by subtraction. I developed Gierd's positioning as a Commerce Intelligence Platform by first ruling out what it isn't. The trademark was confirmed in May 2026.
Seeing both the seller's daily pain and the buyer's strategic view. Two years building Seller Central tools, two years in Amazon corporate BD creating business ideas and product plans for its top-level domains.
Naming a practice before it has a name. Intent-Led Engineering is my attempt to define how software gets built when every engineer leads a team of agents.
Governance under pressure. I've spent a long time in standards bodies, boards and policy. I'm comfortable making unpopular calls and documenting them carefully.
How I got here
1980s. I grow up on a dairy farm, taking apart and rebuilding electronics in the old chicken coop.
Early 1990s. I move to the Big Island of Hawaii.
1990s. I start working in tech. I've stayed in it ever since.
Late 1990s. I settle in the Seattle area, get married and start a family.
Early 2000s. I work with the Web Standards Project. This is where I learned that the boring shared rules underneath the web decide who gets to build on it.
2007–2014. I write about web strategy, standards, prioritization and teams on the original stopjon.com, while doing digital product strategy and running product teams for clients from startups to large companies.
IANA/ICANN transition and schema.org. More standards and governance work. Shared vocabularies and neutral stewardship of the internet's plumbing.
2016 to 2020. The Solid Project, working on people owning their own data.
Around 2015 onward. Ecommerce. About four years of that at Amazon: two on Seller Central building tools for small and medium sellers, then two with corporate BD, mostly creating business ideas and product plans for Amazon's top-level domains (and a little M&A evaluation). That gave me both sides: what sellers struggle with daily, and how a large company decides what new businesses to build.
Around 2021. After 25 years in Seattle, I move to my great-grandfather's farm in Wisconsin.
2022 onward. I co-found Gierd, a Commerce Intelligence Platform for enterprise brands selling across marketplaces. My job there has always been product. At points I've held the CEO title. In 2026 I asked an interim CEO to step in so I could focus on product and technology.
Along the way I've started and led several other companies and teams, sat on boards and committees, and served communities.
Updated November 2026 from my own notes.