Hi, I'm Dave

I missed the Olympic team by one spot in 2016 behind Michael Phelps and Ryan Lochte. Retiring from swimming, I chose to reinvent myself as a "builder", leveraging my engineering background and competitive spirit to help entrepreneurial teams build startups. I'm on a quest to find the same "flow" I had while competing, and I'm still early in my learning journey. I'm here (online) to share my experience transitioning skills from one domain (athletics) to another (business) for others who want to follow along and learn together.

More philosophically, after 18 years in the pool and eight years honing my skills beyond it, I've been focused on forging myself into an iterative machine that will allow me to win in life. A lot to unpack there - like, what does "win in life" even mean. Currently, I think a win comes from aiming to evolve systems that appear sub-optimal, and I think the greatest way Americans can do that is by starting businesses, which is why I've been pouring my energy into learning entrepreneurship by working at various startup companies.

My public mission is to learn faster through conversations with incredible people who've walked the winning path before - former elite athletes who are now excelling in their careers. These discussions aim to unearth and structure the principles and lessons that drove their success within and beyond their sports, so we can all extract relevant leverage points and apply them in our own lives. For me, this means improving my abilities to grow businesses.

I also work hard to make sure I am focused solely on what matters, and with how complicated life is in the age of technology, I've built tools that I use myself to move faster in a way that feels slower, and eventually, I'll provide these tools for everyone to try out. I'll also build a platform to dive deep into these conversations and the lessons within, to collaborate for an even deeper level of learning.

I would love for you to join, and I hope that you learn as much as I do from these conversations.