Timeline

Four chapters, one through-line.

From the early internet in upstate New York to building at scale in the city, to a new life in Bali. The thread has always been the same: gather people, build the system, make it real.

The journey

How it has gone so far

  1. 1995 to 2000

    Rochester

    Upstate New York

    Where it started. At 18 I built Onechord, one of the largest online music communities in the early days of the internet, and ran live music nights across Buffalo, Syracuse, and Ithaca. It was my first real business with employees, and the first time I saw that you could gather people around something you love and turn it into something real.

    • Onechord: a leading early-internet online music community
    • Live music events several nights a week across upstate New York
    • My first proper business with employees, started at 18

  2. 1999 to 2012

    New York, the early years

    New York City

    New York is where I learned to build at scale. In 1999 I founded NYIM Training and grew it into the largest corporate software and business training company in the city, training more than 90,000 people, including Fortune 5 CEOs, the CIA, the FBI, and every New York State and City University professor. Outside the classroom I was deep in the culture of the city, building communities everywhere I went.

    • NYIM Training founded (1999): NYC's largest business and software training company
    • More than 90,000 people trained, with over 1,000 testimonials
    • Couchsurfing early ambassador, founded the Couch Crash Festival
    • Disorient art collective, and Chaos Cooking, one of the world's largest cooking communities (52 countries)

  3. 2013 to 2019

    New York, the later years

    Brooklyn and beyond

    As the training company matured, I started building communities, spaces, and experiments. Lightning Society became a cultural hub in Brooklyn and threw the Burlesquerade, which Business Insider called the best event New York has ever seen. I sold a VR company, built short-term rentals including one in the Empire State Building, patented a product, and kept testing new ideas.

    • Lightning Society: Bushwick co-living and events, a recognized NYC cultural hub
    • The Burlesquerade: a 1,200-person interactive event on the largest superyacht in the US
    • VRVR: a virtual reality and 360 video company, built and sold
    • Iron Amethyst: short-term rentals including one in the Empire State Building, plus a retreat in the Catskills

  4. 2020 to now

    Bali

    Bali, Indonesia

    I moved my life, and my work, to Bali. I founded the Bali Bloom Festival, built glamping resorts and a real estate fund, helped develop Nuanu Creative City, and went deep on consciousness and inner work. Now I run Mastermind HQ and build AI companies like All Sorted, bringing everything I have learned about systems back to founders.

    • Bali Bloom Festival: the world's first contributor-owned festival, 1,500 participants
    • Bali Beach Glamping and Glamp Nusa: luxury resorts delivering 24 to 28 percent annual ROI
    • Helped develop Nuanu Creative City and ran the largest study of intentional communities
    • Mastermind HQ and All Sorted AI, plus The Connection Map framework