I currently live in Seattle, WA, where I work as the Co-founder and CEO of Branch. I dropped out of high school and received a grant from the Thiel Fellowship. I share my ideas, life stories, and other projects on my blog.

Outside work, I lift weights, work on my mile time, spend time with my lovely wife and friends, read books, and play guitar and video games. I love all genres of music, but country music is my favorite genre to listen to and play.

A short summary of my life so far

I was born in Van Buren, Arkansas (near Fort Smith), but I grew up all over the Ozarks between Poteau, Oklahoma, and Branson, Missouri. My parents had built a landscape and nursery business before splitting up and ultimately leaving it behind to pursue various sales jobs. During this turbulent time, we moved more than 20 times before I was 18.

I found solace on the computer in my room. It was my safe place, away from the childhood adversity I won't get into right now. I fell in love with a game called Minecraft, which sparked many other loves. I taught myself Java to make mods for the game. I learned how to create a server to share my creations. Then, I learned to monetize it into a proper business. I learned Photoshop and After Effects to create content to market it. The list goes on. It wasn't just Minecraft. I made several other apps and various projects in my teens. All of this prepared me for what I'm doing today. 

At around 16 or 17, it became clear that I did not want to go to college. I couldn't even if I wanted to. My grades were terrible. I never did classwork but would instead find every opportunity to sneak away and work on my own projects. I wouldn't be able to graduate high school. So, instead, I took the HISET exam and skipped my senior year in 2016.  I used this time to build Statscraft, which was like Mixpanel for Minecraft servers. Tebex acquired the business, which was then called Buycraft.

At 18, I decided to move to San Diego, CA. My aunt and uncle live there. I only met them a handful of times beforehand, but it was the only place where I knew other people. (I also would have considered living with my online best friends, but they all lived out of the US.) In San Diego, I started working as a software engineer at a crypto startup called Divi in 2017. I only lasted here a few short months. I had met a girl online while live-streaming myself going around the city, and within three months, we were engaged. It was a whirlwind adventure, and I was so swept up in it that I stopped showing up to work. We got married that same year in 2018, just nine months after meeting for the first time.

After leaving Divi at 19, I founded a cliche consumer social meetup app called Beekn. Of course, I didn't know this was a cliche at the time. Yet stupid and delusionally optimistic, I got a $150k angel check and got to work with two others. We built a good product but could not find a product-market fit. Still delusional, I had sold all of my crypto and went into credit card debt trying to make it work. But in 2019, it had shut down.

After a few months of odd jobs and freelancing amid the 2020 pandemic, I had an idea to help people work remotely by smashing Minecraft and Discord together like I had worked for years prior. I co-founded Branch at 21. Branch was a way for remote teams to re-create serendipity and spontaneous conversations by bumping into each other inside a virtual office with proximity chat. Since founding Branch, we have raised over $14M in funding, pivoted twice, and are now building mobile games!

I've omitted several details here, and a lot has happened since. I plan to write more about all of my life experiences. If that interests you, consider subscribing to my newsletter or contacting me to get to know me directly. I love meeting new people!