About
I apply game design thinking to building companies. Here’s what I’ve learned.
If you’re building something — a product, a company, a habit — and you’ve ever felt like the frameworks everyone hands you are missing something, this site is for you. Here’s what you’ll find:
- A sharper lens for systems thinking. Game design has precise vocabulary for things business strategy fumbles with — core loops, feedback mechanisms, meaningful decisions. I use that vocabulary here, and it cuts through a lot of noise.
- Writing from someone actively building. I’m not theorizing from the sidelines. I’m in the middle of building a company right now. The observations come from that.
- Short sparks and long essays. Some ideas deserve a paragraph. Some deserve ten.
- No filler, no schedule. Things appear when I have something worth saying. Quality over cadence.
My story
I’ve been obsessed with games for as long as I can remember — not just playing them, but taking them apart to see how they work. What makes a game loop satisfying? Why does a bad dice roll feel different in Pandemic versus Risk? Why do some games end and leave you wanting to play again immediately, while others feel like homework?
At some point I started asking the same questions about businesses. What’s the core loop of this company? Where’s the feedback mechanism? Is the player — the customer — making meaningful decisions? The vocabulary mapped surprisingly well. The frameworks mapped even better.
Right now I’m building TalentMatch Pro, an AI-powered hiring platform that connects candidates, employers, and expert interviewers. The hiring process is broken in specific, fixable ways, and I’m building the fix.
On the side, I host regular game nights and spend a lot of time thinking about game design — the mechanics, the economics, and the strange satisfaction of a well-designed system clicking into place. This site is where those two worlds collide.
Admonition examples
Five variants for surfacing information at different urgency levels.
This site publishes on no fixed schedule. Things appear when I have something genuinely worth saying — quality over cadence.
Start with the core loop. If you can’t describe what a player (or user) does every 30 seconds, the design isn’t done yet.
Complexity added early is rarely removed later. When in doubt, cut the mechanic — you can always add it back.
Shipping a product no one wants to use causes irreversible reputational damage. Playtest and validate before you launch.
The goal of feedback is not to make everyone happy — it’s to find the gap between your intention and the player’s experience.
Where to go from here
If you want to say hello or disagree with something I wrote, the guestbook is always open.