I love turning cool ideas into great experiences.
In elementary school I ran a full-blown playground empire with fake currency, paper weapons, and a full chain of command.
I later moved on to hosting viral height-matched basketball tournaments (think weight classes in fighting, but for height), running a marketing agency for basketball trainers, reselling beanie babies…and many more.
a cool pic from the first HMH (Height Matched Hoops)
In college, I started building software with my friend Declan.
Our first product was an app that let you wake up your friends with voice messages. It got a couple hundred thousand downloads, but fizzled out quickly.
We made a bunch of products after that. Most failed. A couple did quite well; we left college to build and travel the world.
Our work reached hundreds of millions of people. We owned 100% of our businesses, which were lean, profitable, and growing fast.
At a certain point I realized that I was lost in the sauce. So I hit the brakes and went back to school.
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I then dropped out again to start SLAM & Co.— a brand for people pursuing their life's work.
We rented out a beautiful 3-story workspace and filled it with desks, 3d printers, plants, art, coffee… basically our dream space for making stuff.
And we put together a community of artists, builders, musicians, and founders going all-in on their life's work. Here, they can work on anything they want, for free— no strings attached.
I think what we're doing is pretty cool, but it's new and quickly evolving. We're figuring it out as it goes. Follow along on our Instagram.
Also, I write down updates, thoughts, and learnings every once in a while on Substack, so click below if you'd like to see that.
Get in touch: derrick@slam.co
