About

👋 Hi, I'm Gary.

After nearly two decades of building Internet products and businesses, I'll be sharing what I've learned here. I'll write long-form essays primarily about startups, technology, and product management. I may also periodically provide in depth analysis of products or companies that I find interesting or important.

With the exception of the last three years, I've been an entrepreneur my entire adult life. From ugly cofounder disputes to lack of market demand to simply running out of money, I've learned first hand that starting a business that provides products or services people love (and are willing to pay for) is hard. Really hard. In the essays I write on these topics, I'll aim to be as candid as possible.

Today I'm a Managing Partner at Micromerch, a full-service brand merchandising company headquartered in Cincinnati, Ohio. Micromerch creates and distributes sustainable branded merchandise for creators, startups and nonprofits. After abruptly losing my job at a venture-backed startup, I bootstrapped the company to over $1MM in revenue in less than a year.

Previously, I led product teams as a Senior Manager of Product Manager at Kroger Technology & Digital. At Kroger, I helped build the ABacus experimentation platform to enable A/B testing at scale, evangelized product-led ways of working across dozens of teams, and launched the company's first online marketplace for third-party sellers.

👪 Family

My wife Ashley and I have been married since 2015. We have two boys, Caleb and Elliot, who are four and two-years-old. I love them dearly and they inspire me to continually improve myself. We live in Cincinnati, Ohio where we enjoy visiting the Cincinnati Nature Center and Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden which is home to the world famous Fiona The Hippo.

📚 Hobbies

I'm an avid lifelong Star Wars fan and collector. I saw The Empire Strikes Back in 1995 when I was ten-years-old and have loved the franchise ever since. I started collecting Star Wars memorabilia shortly after. It even inspired my last company, CompleteSet, which I'll write about more on this website. I also love reading, writing, and watching movies (I've seen almost 800 of them).