Bootstrapper techie entrepreneur and former CPA and construction contractor with broad experience in tech and non-tech.
Big mid-life pivot - For most of the past decade Jim has quietly studied for a new career - designing tech-driven innovative consumer and industrial Internet projects by mining concepts from across disciplines. His first projects are rolling out now.
The Big Concept Toolbox:
During this mid-life sabbatical he has acquired working knowledge and experience in dozens of disciplines and expanded his business theory base - far more education than an MBA and PhD combined.
Jim's deep and broad background across industries and disciplines along with continuous study is a huge toolbox of concepts that are available to create new industries or major solutions. He has available billions of potential combinations - probably more than anyone in history.
His investment in that toolbox is in the millions of dollars in direct and opportunity costs. He expects a significant return on investment over the next 30 - 40 years.
As with his previous business experience he will not be the typical one-trick-pony entrepreneur.
Jim's business focus are projects based on:
Curiosity-driven entrepreneurship.
Cross-discipline conceptual framework innovation.
Business concept, product, related scientific research, design and start-up.
Projects that could create billion dollar companies.
Defining traits:
Intellectual curiosity.
Study and workaholic.
High cognitive energy.
Honesty, integrity, high ethical standards.
Proven ability to quickly change direction and adapt to new circumstances by creating new lines of business.
Highly communicative.
Comfortable with ambiguity.
Jim's career focus:
Use his extensive and unusual multi-discipline studies and experiences (produced useful work in over 50 disciplines to date) to develop innovative business frameworks, models, and processes that solve big problems in big markets. Jim has a 3D mental view of frameworks similar to an architect's vision of a building. This is also similar to script writing for movies. It is an art and a valuable and unusual skill.
Do things that are intellectually interesting and unusual.
Maintain ability to rapidly adjust business methods for business environment changes and new opportunities. Battle-tested entrepreneur in multiple industries in four major recessions and in Russia where he bootstrapped businesses in the face of high crime, 2,500% annual inflation, a collapsing government, economic system, and infrastructure, clueless markets, staff, and services, laws written for a prior age, and more.
Focus on developing cross-discipline innovative solutions to large market problems.
Focus on study and research for relevant disciplines. From 1998 to 2007 his focus was on developing new technology skills and future projects that would build equity - a massive mid-life pivot from small businesses.
Current business activity: CEO, Intiri, Inc.
Pre-revenue startup in Silicon Valley, California.
Projects below are within Intiri.
Jim's goal is to build Intiri into a cross-industry leader.
Projects in active development:
Home iDesigner - HiD is the residential interior and architecture design platform for the world. Disguised as an online social game it is also a collaborative 3D design platform and marketplace in the interior design, remodeling, and architecture spaces. HiD is a major solution that greatly reduces constraints in over a dozen related shelter industries. The Intiri Designs project is directly involved in this project as a supplier of both virtual and real products. Home iDesigner is the marketing platform for Intiri Designs and other companies.
Intiri Designs - Jim has identified a large hole in the residential interior decor and design market for lifestyle-designed products. Intiri is developing product designs to fit this market. Few products currently available fit major lifestyle themes for residential interiors.
Based on Intiri research the market for such products is significant. The products will be sold on the Web first and if successful Intiri may open retail stores. There is another interesting aspect to this project. Some scientific research indicates that meaningful interiors, the design objective, increase health and well-being, including longevity.
Intiri has made substantial progress developing a new conceptual framework and business model for residential interior and product design. Also in development is Significance Design, a conceptual framework for a new design philosophy that, based on scientific research, may help to create improvements in human well-being, including health and longevity.
This project was on the back-burner during development of WineQuesters.com. It is active again and entering the retail stage.
WineQuesters.com - This largest California wine travel site and iPhone app was developed to attract a certain market demographic. The depth of information and filtering and map features are far more advanced than competing sites and provides real value to the market. This project targets one of the world's best demographics - tens of millions of wine travelers, few who were affected by the Great Recession.
Wine Questers is an innovative business marketing platform that will be marketed to wineries and travel businesses when Website visits are higher. It is also Intiri's test platform for various initiatives - an in-house lab rat.
Projects in conceptual development:
Product Dev Chain - The constraints in the current product development model are well known. Current solutions are fragmented and suffer multiple constraints. Initially elements of PDC will be developed into Home iDesigner.
Podnets - Current social networking sites are poor tools for the way humans actually live. Initially elements of Podnets will be subtley developed into current projects for market testing. Google + probably obsoletes this project. It seems to be a very similiar concept.
Discovie - Discovie is the only social game of chance for the real world and a new use for check-in.
Book material - Collecting information from the projects for a variety of non-fiction books. The idea is to not waste information paid for with time and / or money. Useful information is collected and treated as a valuable by-product instead of pushed aside and forgotten if not used directly in a project.
Contact
Jim prefers not to be contacted by anyone he does not hand his business card to. He rarely makes phone calls.
