I've played with ideas. Some turned into ventures. Some didn't. A few made money. Others just made me think differently. Things like websites, entertainment products, interfaces, experiences. Some were experiments. One even landed on a prominent site. I like making ideas tangible, whether through code, design, or story. Ask me :-)
My background? Global headhunting, if you want to call it that. I landed clients. Sometimes it was serendipity—a rooftop drink, a missed flight, a conversation that cracked open a market. Other times, it was cold precision: outreach, follow-up, close.
Clients needed me to find people others couldn't. I did! I moved them across borders, across time zones, and across emotional thresholds. I didn’t just find the right people—I negotiated the right deals too. Salaries and/or day rates, payment terms, project scopes—you name it, I made sure it worked for everyone and me too. I understood enough about contracts and compliance to keep things legit and hassle-free. Even payroll.
I jumped in and out of markets—and planes. Literally. MySQL was one I caught early—before it was 'cool', before it was stable. I introduced those with highly specialized technical skills into pressure-cooker environments, trading floors, telecom labs, and startups. Think IT Security Manager for a bank in Zurich and PKI Security Architect for a London fintech—before 'fintech' was even a common term.
I liked tech. I liked chaos. I liked people who were halfway out the door and just needed the right story to walk through it. Many didn’t know they were halfway out—I helped them see it. I coached them—not in the formal sense, but in the way you do when someone’s stuck and you ask the one question that unlocks everything. I helped them reframe their value, rewrite their narrative, and walk into rooms they didn’t think they belonged in—until they did. I didn’t chase roles. I solved problems. And when the usual channels didn’t deliver, I built new ones. Or broke the old ones open.
I didn’t just match resumes to job specs. I uncovered the real requirements behind the role—the specific technical expertise needed, the challenges to solve, and the unique fit. I didn’t work from job descriptions; I got into the details. I spoke the language of the role. My technical interviews weren’t surface-level; I drilled deeper.
But it wasn’t even just about the technical side. It was about the person—how they *were* as much as what they *did*. I paid attention to the way they carried themselves, how they interacted with others, how they communicated, even how they sat or how they drank their coffee. I took note of their mannerisms, the subtle things that reveal personality traits—traits that could make or break their fit for a team or culture. And I always compared that to the people and environments they’d be joining, making sure they not only had the right skills, but the right chemistry and presence.
Oh, and I’ve had plenty of thumbs-down along the way. Rejection for new business? Yeah, it’s part of the deal. But I’ve never kept score of my win-lose ratio. Doing so would be deeply dispiriting. What I do know is that I kept going—reframing, learning, adapting. If someone really needs the receipts, they’ll ask. And when they do, I’ll have stories—not just names.
