How did you go from ecommerce to AI?

The thread was always building systems that turn messy real-world signal into something useful. I got on the web during the first tech bubble at the University of Iowa, did a stint in market research crunching grocery sales data, then started Rocket Web in 2010 and spent years deep in Magento and ecommerce, mostly with senior developers across Europe.

Ecommerce is a brutal, practical school: real workflows, real money, real consequences, no room for theater. When AI got good enough to be a genuine thinking and building partner, it wasn't a pivot so much as the same instinct with a far bigger lever. I started leaning on AI agents to ship more than one person could, and that became Guidance Systems, helping teams use AI to think, not just move faster. Same throughline the whole way: cut the noise, build the thing that actually helps.