Friends of the Studio
A list of people who have shaped and continue to shape my thinking — the people I read the most and go to when I want feedback on drafts of essays or sounding boards for my ideas.
I'll note that this list skews towards people who are self-employed, run a studio/agency of their own, and/or can be hired for projects and collaborations (with a few exceptions**).
Tom Critchlow**
Tom is the indie consulting blogfather and someone who I regularly turn to for advice. His fingerprints have been all over the studio from the very beginning.
Elan Miller
Founder of brand strategy & design agency Off-Menu. Our ad hoc zooms always push my thinking and help me reframe what I'm looking at.
Ely Lerner
Ely is a product and growth leader turned startup advisor. I've probably shared “Product Strategy is Really About Offense vs. Defense” more than any other essay.
Nicole Zeng
Nicole was my mentor at Slack, and has continued to shape the way that I think about research, decisions, and organizational behavior.
Sarah Sled
My first manager at Facebook and current Seattle Research Community co-founder. Sarah has helped build and run some of the world's best research teams at Meta, Google, and Amazon.
Loi Sessions Goulet
A former Facebook research colleague and current indie researcher/consultant. She's probably helped build more 0 → 1 research practices than anyone else.
Tim Casasola
A fellow workshop lover and org design nerd. Tim's seen and helped organizations of all shapes and sizes get out of their own way.
David Choe
David and I met through the MAEKAN community. He now runs Dept of Anthropology and shares some of the best deep dives on brand strategy and business principles.
Bo Ren
Bo is a fellow liberal arts kid turned product person turned solopreneur. After a career in tech, she's exploring new ventures in community.
Kate Towsey
Kate is the ResearchOps guru and former instigator of the global ReOps community. She now consults and advises on ReOps and is editor-in-chief of The ResearchOps Review. (Check out our podcast episode here.)
Paige Paquette
Paige and I originally crossed paths at Slack, where we both worked on early Platform efforts. Since then she's gone on to help companies like Stripe, OpenAI, and Replit figure out marketing for technical audiences. (Paige interviewed me for the Calyx blog here.)