

I'm an
inventor,
startup executive,
software engineer,
data scientist,
producer, and
promoter.
Themes of my work have included:
AR/VR,
cognitive psychology,
copyright,
cybersecurity,
dance music,
digital identity, disinformation,
elections,
human and machine learning,
messaging,
natural language,
organizing,
politics,
spatial audio,
tech policy, and
video.
I’ve co-founded two nonprofits and one startup, which was acquired.
I have written about tech policy for
The New York Times,
The Information, and
Capitol Weekly.
Work
HustleIn 2014, I co-founded my startup
Hustle. Hustle empowers organizations to humanize communication through text and video messaging.
Hustle has delivered more than 1 billion messages for our clients, many of which are progressive advocacy organizations. We went from zero to $10m in annual revenue in 4 years.
I served as CEO from 2014 to 2019, and currently serve as Chief Evangelist.
Acquired by Social Capital in 2020.
Envelop
In 2014, I co-founded and currently serve as board chair for
Envelop, a nonprofit whose mission is to unite humanity through profound communal listening experiences.
We achieve our mission through community-supported immersive audio venues, inspiring events, educational programs, and free open-source spatial audio software tools.
We have put on more than 700 immersive listening events at our physical and online venues.
Featured in
Wired.
Envelop Stream
In 2022, I co-developed and launched
Envelop Stream, a mixed reality music venue combining virtual environments with multiple channels of streaming immersive audio.
Envelop Stream works with any Chromium-based browser.
Envelop EarshotIn 2020, I built and released the first-ever live stream transcoder to support Higher-Order Ambisonics, an open-source tool called
Earshot.
Earshot enables next-generation immersive audio experiences for the web and VR/AR/XR platforms.
Campaign Verify
In 2020, I created and served as a founding board member for
Campaign Verify, a non-partisan, nonprofit service for U.S. political campaigns, parties, and PACs to verify their identity.
Campaign Verify helps protect the integrity of elections by serving as a trusted identity broker for U.S. wireless messaging networks and digital communication services.
Envelop for LiveIn 2009, I started developing open-source software for musicians to control multichannel audio arrays using Ableton Live.
A friend and I wrote the initial version in Pd. The latest version, for Live 10, is written in Max/MSP with Max for Live. I contributed several effects to the most recent version.
Featured in
Create Digital Music.
P2P TextingHustle is the result of my 2014 invention of P2P texting, the political and community organizing method now widely used by campaigns and nonprofits.
My invention of P2P texting was heavily influenced by the work of Saul Alinsky, Hahrie Han, and Marshall Ganz.
In one study,
P2P texting increased the 2020 Democratic turnout among least likely voters by 19.4 percentage points.
WineGlassIn 2014, I built and launched one of the first augmented reality (AR) applications for iOS.
WineGlass allows users to take a photo of a wine list and browse ratings, reviews, and reasonable prices for each wine.
WineGlass peaked at the #4 Paid App in the App Store.
Featured on
CBS This Morning.
Facebook Mood and Activity SharingFrom 2012-2013, I built and launched Mood and Activity Sharing on Facebook with a small team.
Mood and Activity Sharing — the smiley button in the status composer — lets Facebook users add a feeling or an activity to their posts with an emoji.
This simple feature made it easier and more acceptable for Facebook users to share a wider range of human emotions.
Featured in
TechCrunch.
Facebook Research Polls
From 2008 to 2011 I built Facebook’s research polling platform.
To my knowledge, it is the most powerful polling platform currently in existence.
Facebook Lexicon
In 2008 I built “Google Trends for Facebook” with a colleague using NLP, ML, and data visualization techniques.
We were able to predict Obama and McCain favorability ratings 3 days before the Rasmussen tracking polls came out.
We also were able to predict CDC’s hospital flu data better than Google Trends.
Featured in
VentureBeat.
HappyFactorIn 2008, two friends and I built an SMS-based happiness self-tracking system that would randomly sample a user's mood throughout the day, and provide them with personal well-being analytics.
Featured in
Wired.
Ramscar Lab @ Stanford
From 2004-2007, I worked in Michael Ramscar's cognitive psychology lab at Stanford, investigating language acquisition and human learning.
I wrote Flash-based games, created learning models and simulations, and helped run experiments.
Patents
I have been awarded 25 patents, and have several others pending.
Fun
DJ / Live PAI have been DJing since 2002. I play House, Disco, Downtempo and Ambient music.
I collect vinyl records — mostly disco and post-disco from the late 70’s and early 80’s. I also enjoy making edits.
I perform a surround-sound Live PA with Ableton and Envelop for Live. I’ve played at
FORM Arcosanti several times.
Education
Stanford University, BS, Symbolic Systems
Stanford University, incomplete MS, Statistics
Languages