The Variance

On the Agency of Others, Why the Idea Is Only 15%, and How to Stop Being Your Own Worst Enemy I sat down with the Move Swiftly Podcast — a show about innovative teamwork — for a conversation that ran about 50 minutes and went places I didn't expect. We talked about my failed side businesses, why Gen X is the "Pottery Barn generation," why the U.S. patent system is quietly broken, why your success comes down to the agency of others, and why I now believe the idea itself is 15%

My Conversation with the Vet SOS Podcast I sat down with the Vet SOS Podcast for a conversation that started with "who is Doug?" and ended somewhere much bigger — the ability curve, ADHD as a superpower, why corporate America broke me, and why I now believe adaptive design is one of the most under-appreciated leadership disciplines of our time. It ran a little over an hour, and anyone who knows me knows I can talk. If you're mostly interested in the highlights, use the articl

I sat down for another long conversation with Peter Marcus Bach on The Grand Challengers Podcast recently — this one going deeper into the philosophy behind NULU than the product itself. We covered adaptive design as a discipline, why "inclusive design" and "universal design" are really just windows into the same house, why the professional chef is often the hardest person in the room to convince, and the AI-driven approach I'm building to close what I've been calling the abi

I sat down for a long conversation recently on Unconventional Money Moves with Joshua Krafchick about NULU, about leaving 25 years in the mortgage industry, about ADHD and the military and Commander's Intent, and about why the knife in your drawer has been quietly wrong for 200 years. It ran about an hour. There's a lot in there — some of it about the product, some of it about how I got here, some of it about the 150 million people this company is actually being built for. Ra

We need to start thinking about what can go right with AI and who it can help. Much of the public conversation about artificial intelligence revolves around replacement. The argument tends to fall into one of two camps: either AI will replace human thinking, or it will diminish the value of human work. The framing assumes that the central question is substitution. But from where I sit, that isn't the most interesting aspect of what these tools are doing. The more compelling d