Shepherd's mission is to help readers find books they will LOVE (not just like). We do that by growing a strong community of readers who share their favorite books and then wecreate fun and unique ways for readers to explore and discover books. For authors, I want to help you meet more readers. Authors illuminate our world, take us on faraway journeys, and entertain us. There is a growing trend for authors to become their marketing team. That concerns me because it is tough to do, and it takes time away from writing. I want to help authors market their books with less effort. I also want to find ways to recommend book topics that will challenge readers. We live in a time when social media algorithms only reinforce our worldview. I want Shepherd to play a role in combating that. A book is one of the best ways to help someone see the world through different eyes. We need a lot more of that right now.

WorkDNA shows engineering candidates your culture, team, and engineering practices and challenges. We get candidates excited about working on your team. The end result is less noise and more responses by qualified interested engineering candidates.I took a step back in May due to the impact of Covid, and my awesome co-founder Jeremy took charge and is continuing to help engineering teams show off their culture and work environment.

How much time do you spend in meetings? How much time do you have for deep work? We show you how much time your team has for deep work and help you build a culture of effective meetings using gentle behavioral nudges and meaningful data. We offer both a paid enterprise version and a free app for you to get your stats. We had a good run! We scored two large enterprise clients but after a year we just couldn't find the value part of the equation and pivoted to something new.

Pressed is the Costco of the managed WordPress hosting world. Our clients receive a white label platform to grow their brand while our team runs everything. We run on 100% Amazon infrastructure with *true* WordPress cloud hosting. Pressed was sold in June 2017 to Envato. Props to a fantastic team of 20+ as they continue forward under new ownership.

I am so proud of what the team accomplished over the last 8 years. It was an honor to be part of an amazing team of 130+ people working remote from every corner of the world. We worked very hard to ensure the team has a great work environment and I believe this fostered the amazing service we were known for. I know our 55,000+ customers felt this way. In June 2015 the business was sold to EIG, and our transition period ended August 2016.

I assisted the great team at CodeAnywhere in any way I could. And, I learned a lot.

We were a small team of five working to make it easier to build, manage, backup, and secure web apps (WordPress, Joomla, Drupa, Etc). This was sold in late 2013. It was a fun ride and I learned a lot.

We developed a custom ad tracking system along with a custom CMS platform. We used those to launch and run a large network of content sites aimed at a technical audience. During this period I learned an amazing amount about SEO, internet marketing, affiliate marketing, branding, reputation management, and development. The network was focused on web hosting related topics. We sold the network and platform to a tech firm in California in late 2007 (it was then sold to Ziff Davis).

I am honored to have been the first official employee at HostGator, an amazing company and wild ride! I learned more than I ever thought possible about the hosting industry, affiliate marketing, and management. I had many roles; I managed the sales department, managed remote staff, trained staff, and handled a wide range of small jobs that needed to be done well.

During high school, I started a website focused on the emulation of old computer/gaming hardware and it became quite popular over time. Along with a great team, we grew the single site into a network of websites on a variety of emulation topics. I'm particularly proud of the work we did to make sure developers had the resources to ensure that these amazing games didn't disappear forever. I sold the sites in 2002 in order to try something new. From 2002 to 2005 I started a hosting company while attending College. It grew steadily and acquired two other small hosting companies during that time. I sold it to a Canadian hosting firm in 2004 when I joined HostGator. It was a challenge to run these 24/7 businesses while in school but it fostered an intensity I like to bring to my work.