top of page

Radical Acceptance and the Ability Curve: My Conversation on Grounded In Maine


On Killing the Death Grip, Why Adaptive Design Isn't Charity, and Why the Cool Kids' Knife Should Be an Adaptive One


I sat down with Amy Bolduc on Grounded In Maine — a warm, community-rooted podcast that explores lives lived with intention — for a wide-ranging hour-plus conversation that started with the meaning of NULU and wandered through the science of the kinetic chain, the ableism inside the disability community, the DARPA-style path for adaptive innovation, and why I want the next generation of children to grow up thinking a NULU is just what a knife is. Amy called me a chronic inventor, which I'm now going to steal. If you're mostly interested in the highlights, here's the map. Timestamps, the ideas at each stop, and the through-line that connects them.


⏱ [1:12] — What Nulu Actually Means


"The NULU came about as a logical extension of a knife called the ulu — an Inuit knife traditionally used by women because they did more varied tasks. It just had a real good natural alignment. You'll see it in adaptive catalogs because it's got that natural ergonomic capacity."


The naming lineage matters. The traditional ulu is a crescent-bladed Inuit knife historically used by women for the full range of village tasks — dressing game, preparing food, cutting hides, building shelter. It survives in adaptive catalogs today because the top-mounted handle geometry naturally reduces the wrist load that gives arthritic and MS users so much trouble.


NULU is new ulu. We took what instinctively worked about the ulu — the arc, the alignment, the elbow-driven force — and asked how far can this geometry go? More engaged cutting surface. A side-mounted handle. Point-free geometry. Multiple grip modes. Patent pending. Same design philosophy, deliberately extended.


If you already know an ulu, you already know why the NULU works. If you don't, the ulu is the ancestor. NULU is the current chapter in a 5,000-year-old design lineage.


⏱ [2:38] — Designed Around My Own Issues


"I designed it around my own issues. Disabled vet — carpal tunnel, arthritis, chronic tennis elbow. I was in my workshop feeling sorry for myself. Couldn't swing a hammer, couldn't forge. There was a circular saw blade in the scrap pile."


The origin story I keep telling because it keeps being useful. I didn't set out to build an adaptive product company. I set out to solve my own problem. I couldn't cook. I couldn't forge. My shoulder was failing. I was actively feeling sorry for myself in a workshop full of scrap metal. And a circular saw blade caught my eye.


If you're a founder and you're waiting for a market-analysis-based inspiration to strike — stop waiting. Look at what you personally can't do that you wish you could. That's where the honest inventions come from. Everything else is just optimization.


⏱ [4:04] — Fine Motor Skills, Bar Grip, and Kinetic Alignment


"When I exercise, I keep the bar sort of open-hand — not the safest, my son bawled me out for it — but I don't grip, and I don't inflame my joints. That's the same thinking as NULU."


Small tell about how deeply the design philosophy runs through my daily life. Even at the gym, I've learned to not death-grip things. Open-palm bar grip. Loose finger position. Letting the kinetic chain do the work rather than clenching my joints into inflammation.


That's the exact principle NULU is built on. The traditional chef's knife forces you into a death grip. Every death grip breaks the kinetic chain. NULU asks for none of that. Hold it loosely, let the chain stay connected from your core to the blade, and the force arrives at the cutting surface without wrecking your joints along the way.


If you have arthritis, tennis elbow, or carpal tunnel and you've been powering through — please try loosening your grip on everything. Not just your knife. Your steering wheel. Your phone. Your gym bar. Your pen. The compounding damage from decades of clenching is one of the quiet epidemics nobody talks about.


⏱ [4:27] — Ability by Contemporary Standards vs. by Task


"People grade their ability based on what's accepted for their contemporaries. I look at it through my military training — task, conditions, and standards. Children are functionally disabled for adult tasks. We don't call them disabled, but they can't do the task."


The reframe that changed how I see the whole disability landscape. Most people evaluate their ability against their peer group. Am I as strong as other 45-year-olds? Am I as sharp as my colleagues? That's a social comparison, not a functional one.


The military taught me a different framework: task, conditions, standards. Can you complete this specific task, under these specific conditions, to these specific standards? If yes, capable. If no, incapable — for that task. And that framework is honest because it acknowledges capability is contextual, not fixed.


Apply that lens and the whole cultural conversation about disability shifts. A child is functionally disabled for many adult tasks — but we don't call them disabled because their limitation is developmental and expected. An 85-year-old with arthritis is functionally disabled for the same tasks that an unaffected 40-year-old handles easily. Someone in a wheelchair is functionally disabled for standing tasks — but often more capable than an average adult for seated core-driven tasks. Ability isn't binary. It's task-specific.


Once you internalize that, the market for adaptive design stops being "the disabled community" and starts being "everyone whose specific task-condition-standard mismatch could be resolved by better design." Which is, in practice, all of us.


⏱ [5:38] — Adaptive or Universal? Both.


"Our biggest challenge is — is it an adaptive knife, or will it apply to all of us at some point as we all degrade? We've really gotten into universal design. There's so much out there that's universally designed that we don't even think about — voice-to-text has its root in adaptive."


The false binary I keep pushing back on. Products don't have to be either adaptive or mainstream. Nearly every mainstream technology you use today has adaptive roots. Voice-to-text. Curb cuts. Touch screens with adjustable text size. Audiobooks. Closed captioning. Automatic doors. Ergonomic chairs. Kitchen tools with soft-grip handles.


None of these started as mainstream innovations that trickled down to disabled users. They started as adaptive solutions that mainstream users adopted once they realized how much better the experience was. NULU is on the same trajectory. Today it's marketed to users navigating chronic illness, aging, or disability. In 10 years, I want it in every home in America — not because those homes are disabled, but because it's simply a better knife.


⏱ [6:12] — Ritual vs. Improvement


"When I posted my first TikTok, someone said 'oh great, someone wants to reinvent the wheel.' My answer: the wheel has been reinvented many times to make it better."


The single most common form of resistance to NULU comes from people whose objection is tradition, not function. Someone with a two-decade attachment to the linear chef's knife will reject any alternative on principle — not because the alternative doesn't work, but because the traditional form is emotionally embedded.


Fair enough. Traditions matter. But they shouldn't be immune from improvement. The wheel has been reinvented dozens of times — from wooden cart wheels to rubber tires to pneumatic tubes to solid-core aerospace wheels. Every reinvention was resisted. Every reinvention was ultimately better.


If your objection to NULU is "but knives have always been shaped like that," that's not a functional objection. That's a ritual objection. Ritual is fine — I love ritual — but don't let it prevent you from adopting something that would genuinely improve your daily life.


⏱ [8:34] — Sitting Courtside for Aging


"Being a caretaker is sitting courtside seats to aging. You watch decline that plateaus, then advances, then plateaus again. Every mainstream universally-designed product will make my life easier and make me less dependent."


I designed NULU while my father was living with us — 88 years old at the time, in the last chapter of his life. Being a caretaker is a specific kind of education. You watch aging happen in real time, in stages, with plateaus and sudden declines. And you notice — often before the person you're caring for does — that small design choices in their environment either extend independence or accelerate dependence.


Universal design isn't just about serving people who currently need it. It's about preventing people from needing more help than they otherwise would. Every product that meets a body where it is — instead of demanding the body adapt to it — is a small deposit in the independence bank. And independence has a financial component, a purpose component, and a dignity component that compound over decades.


⏱ [9:07] — Knife Plus Fire = Civilization


"This — and fire — is what created civilization. That's why we don't get away from these. The attachment isn't practical anymore. Cutting is now the primary function; hunting is not. But we've inherited the geometry from a use case that stopped mattering."


The historical footnote that reframes everything. The linear chef's knife wasn't designed for the modern kitchen. It's a descendant of the hunting knife — a tool primarily built to stab and secondarily built to cut. Every element of the geometry — the point, the alignment, the balance — is optimized for a primary use case that no home cook ever uses today.


Nobody stabs their onions. Nobody hunts their vegetables. And yet we cook with a tool designed for those exact purposes because tradition — and because nobody bothered to redesign it from first principles for the modern kitchen.


NULU is that redesign. Point-free (because you don't need to stab). Arc geometry (because cutting is now primary). Elbow-driven force transfer (because you're not lunging at a fleeing animal). Same civilization-defining functionality. Different geometry, calibrated to what humans actually do in kitchens today.


⏱ [10:21] — Samurai, Knights, and Blade Identity


"Samurai had a spiritual connection to their katana — it was as much part of them as their body. Knights had cross-hilted swords tied to religious identity. Blades become identity. That's hard to get rid of when there's that connection."


The deeper reason knife design has been so resistant to innovation. In cultures across history, the blade has been more than a tool. It's been an extension of identity. Samurai believed their katana carried spiritual weight. Medieval knights carried cross-hilted swords that tied their weapon to their faith. Chefs today speak about their knives the way other professionals speak about their instruments.


That's beautiful. It's also an obstacle. When a tool is tied to identity, changing the tool feels like changing the self. Which is why we've been slow to reconsider knife geometry even when the functional case is overwhelming.


I respect the tradition. I still bring a traditional knife when I go into the field. Different tools for different contexts. But in the modern home kitchen, the identity attachment shouldn't prevent us from adopting what works better.


⏱ [12:34] — Break the Death Grip, Restore the Chain


"When you use a regular knife, you grip it really tightly. That breaks your kinetic chain. All the force in your body — from your core outward — gets short-circuited at your wrist. NULU keeps the chain connected."


The white paper worth reading (I've been writing it — it's based on experience, not academic training, but the physics holds). Every martial art teaches the same principle: force originates in the core and travels outward through relaxed, aligned extremities. Trained aikido practitioners, boxers, baseball players, and golfers all know this. Your arms are the delivery mechanism. Your core is the engine.


Traditional knife use violates this. The moment you death-grip the handle, your wrist becomes the pivot point — a small joint being asked to bear the load your core should be generating. Your grip strength becomes the limiting factor. Your core disengages. And every cut becomes a wrist-driven operation instead of a core-driven one.


NULU inverts this. Because you don't need to grip firmly, your wrist stays loose. Your core stays engaged. The force chain remains connected from ground to blade. You cut with your whole body, not just your hand. That's why users report feeling less tired after prep work with NULU — not because it's magic, but because they're finally using biomechanics that don't fight themselves.


⏱ [14:12] — Use It However Works for You


"People want to know how to do things 'right.' At Abilities Expo, a young man with a dwarfism condition couldn't cut with his elbow in the way I do. He was all over the place, and it worked for him. We're really cultivating — within safety — use it however works for you."


The design revelation from Abilities Expo. I use NULU one way — elbow in, linear alignment with my body. But every user I watched at Abilities Expo used it differently. Someone with cerebral palsy used it one way. Someone with limited digits used it another. Someone in a wheelchair pulled it toward them in a rowing motion.


And every one of those methods worked. Because the design is not prescriptive. It's an invitation. Meet the tool where you are. Let your body find the grip and motion that works for your specific ability profile.


This is where NULU differs most from a traditional knife. A traditional chef's knife has one correct grip and one correct technique — and if your body can't produce that grip and technique, you're out. NULU has a family of grips and a family of motions, and users self-organize into whichever combination works for them. That's the definition of adaptive.


⏱ [16:14] — "I Wish I Was Disabled"


"I want a knife where someone takes it out and someone else says 'I wish I was disabled.' Because it's a gorgeous tool. Disabled folks want to be cool too. Aesthetics matter."


The mission statement for our next-generation product. Almost every adaptive product on the market today is utility-first, aesthetics-second, and cool-never. The result is a product category that visibly signals disability — which is precisely the last thing many disabled users want their tools to do.


The aspiration for NULU is different. We want a tool that a disabled user proudly pulls out. A tool that a non-disabled user sees and thinks "I want that." A tool that becomes the cool thing at the Sunday dinner party — where the person using it happens to have MS or arthritis, but the product itself is beautiful enough to be desired independent of medical necessity.


That's what adaptive design has been missing. Not just utility. Not just accessibility. Aesthetic desirability. Because disabled people deserve to have beautiful things in their kitchens too — and because the moment adaptive design becomes beautiful, the whole category diffuses into the mainstream by aspiration rather than obligation.


⏱ [17:13] — Ableism Inside the Disability Hierarchy


"Being disabled almost in the hierarchy of disability being ableist — if that even makes sense. Yeah, there are so many different levels of ability, and yours is different than other people's."


A hard truth I want to name. The disability community itself contains hierarchies and forms of ableism that outsiders don't see. Someone with a mild disability may look at someone with a more profound disability and feel — often unconsciously — either superior or ashamed. Someone with a visible disability may resent the person with an invisible disability who "doesn't look disabled." Someone with a lifelong disability may feel that a mid-life accident survivor "doesn't get it" the way they do.


None of this is malicious. All of it is human. But it means the movement for adaptive design and universal design can't be built on the assumption that the disability community is one thing. It's dozens of overlapping communities with different histories, different tools, different politics, and sometimes different views about what accommodations should look like.


The unifying principle I keep coming back to: everyone is somewhere on the ability curve, everyone will move on it, and the point isn't identity — it's serving actual functional needs. That framework works across the hierarchies because it treats every person as a task-and-condition case, not a category.


⏱ [23:26] — ADHD as Superpower (or Disability, Depending on the Task)


"I went to the VA. Told them I thought I was ADHD. They tested me and said 'oh yeah, you are.' Couldn't give me the drugs because I have a heart issue. The guy said 'listen, you went to West Point, you had a good military career, you got your MBA, you seem to be doing okay.'"


My ADHD story, told once more because it makes the ability curve concrete. In elementary school in the early '80s, ADHD wasn't diagnosed as a disability. It was called gifted and talented. Same underlying wiring, entirely different social framing.


In the Army, ADHD was a superpower. Rapidly changing uncertain environments. Multiple simultaneous inputs. Fast decisions under pressure. I could hold four conversations at once and process all of them. Ideal wiring for field operations.


In corporate America, ADHD was a disability. Long meetings. Endless focus on single tasks. Rigid processes. Terrible wiring for that context.


In entrepreneurship, ADHD is a superpower again. Ideation. Vision. Pattern recognition. Rapid pivoting. Ideal wiring for building companies.


Same brain. Same wiring. Different labels depending on the task-condition-standard triplet the person is being evaluated against. That's the ability curve made personal. Your abilities are not fixed. They're contextual. Match the context to your wiring, and you become able. Mismatch it, and you become disabled. The person didn't change. The environment did.


⏱ [27:50] — Three Categories of Disability


"Youth disability that follows through life — they've learned to cope. Midlife things like MS or Parkinson's — same coping arc, compressed. And instantaneous — accident victims, burns. Very different adjustment periods."


The taxonomy I've been developing based on how people actually experience disability. The three broad categories:


Lifelong / youth-onset — Cerebral palsy, Down syndrome, congenital conditions. Users have decades of coping strategies. Often profoundly innovative. The environment is what needs to change, because they've already adapted as much as they can.


Midlife progressive — MS, Parkinson's, RSI, arthritis, aging. Users are learning coping strategies mid-life, often while grieving lost capability. Emotional adjustment is as important as physical adaptation.


Instantaneous — Accident survivors, stroke victims, sudden-onset conditions. Users must adjust rapidly to a world that wasn't built for them. The gap between before and after is emotionally devastating, and the coping infrastructure often isn't in place.


Each category needs different products, different messaging, different community support. And each is served by universal design in a slightly different way. Understanding the taxonomy is the first step to serving the right user with the right tool at the right stage of their journey.


⏱ [31:53] — The Ability Curve Grows the Market to 114 Million


"If you take just people with upper extremity issues — including younger people — it's 114 million. A third of the population. Add seated cutters using the rowing motion, and it's probably 125 million."


The market-sizing insight that let us make the business case. Traditional adaptive product companies size their market based on diagnosed disability populations. That gives you a small, siloed number for any single condition.


The ability curve lets you size the market based on functional symptom clusters across conditions. Upper extremity issues alone — combining MS, Parkinson's, arthritis, RSI, tennis elbow, carpal tunnel, stroke recovery, aging, sports injuries, and youth developmental limitations — reaches 114 million Americans. Add seated users who benefit from the rowing motion (wheelchair users, users with fatigue conditions, users who cook seated for endurance reasons), and it's closer to 125 million.


That's not a niche. That's roughly a third of the U.S. population. And every one of those 125 million people can benefit from NULU's geometry, whether or not they identify with the disability label.


We're not keeping the ability curve as a trade secret. We want other founders and other companies to use it. Because if adaptive product companies stop sizing their market at "the disabled community" and start sizing it at "everyone whose specific symptom cluster maps to our product," the capital flows into the space transform completely. And that transformation lifts every adaptive founder building anything.


⏱ [34:23] — Disabled Innovators Are the Best-Kept Secret


"Except for my soldiers in the army, I've never met a more innovative group of people than the disabled community. They will make stuff out of pool noodles, PVC, whatever they can find to meet a need. And a lot of it could be commercialized."


I keep saying this in every podcast because it keeps being true and undervalued. Some of the best product innovation happening in America right now is happening in the disabled community — done with pool noodles, PVC pipe, duct tape, 3D printers, and household hacks. None of it gets commercialized. Almost none of it reaches the millions of people with similar needs.


That's a market failure at scale. It's also the opportunity NULU's venture studio ambition exists to address. If we can build the pipelines — for design refinement, IP protection, manufacturing, distribution, reimbursement navigation — then garage inventors from the disabled community can license their concepts to us and reach the market without having to become full-time entrepreneurs themselves.


If you're a disabled inventor with a garage prototype that solves a real problem — reach out. Please. This is genuinely what I want to build the rest of my career around.


⏱ [35:12] — DARPA for Disability: The Reimbursement Bridge


"There's a unique benefit in the disabled community — if you make the right essential product, you can get reimbursed. So you can build a good business in that area and then commercialize it into the broader market."


The strategic reframe that changed how I think about product development pathways. The DARPA model works because it funds R&D for the hardest use case (military), then civilianizes the technology. Adaptive can work the same way — solve for the hardest use cases, fund the development through reimbursement mechanisms designed for the disability community, and then let the innovations diffuse into the mainstream.


Reimbursement is the underappreciated financial mechanism that makes this pathway work. Many adaptive products can be reimbursed through state programs, VA benefits, HSA/FSA, or insurance in specific categories. That means users aren't necessarily paying full price out of pocket — which means the premium pricing that reflects the actual utility of the product is sustainable in the adaptive space in a way it might not be in mainstream retail.


Build the business on the reimbursement-supported adaptive market first. Once you've proven demand, refined the product, and built the manufacturing pipeline, the mainstream expansion becomes structurally much easier. That's the pathway NULU is running now.


⏱ [36:16] — Everyone Is One Second Away


"I'll always tell people — one second away from needing this. And it's not cumulative. Every second that goes by, you're not past it. Anything could happen to you."


The reframe I keep coming back to because it's actuarially undeniable. Every reader of this article is one second away from a disability. One bad step on a curb. One car accident. One MRI. One blood test. One misfired reflex.


That's not fear-mongering. That's honest observation of what actually happens to humans. And the second the disability arrives, everything you took for granted about your kitchen, your bathroom, your car, your workplace, your home becomes suddenly, painfully visible.


The people who thrive through that transition are the ones who'd been quietly adopting universal design principles before they needed to. The people who suffer the most are the ones who resisted universal design as "stuff for other people" until the day it became stuff for them.


Adopt early. Your future self will thank you.


⏱ [46:29] — Impact and Income Aren't Opposites


"I hope this generation aspires to impact and income — not one or the other. When people say 'oh, you're helping the disabled community, that's so good,' it's like — I'm not doing it for charity."


The frame I most want investors and next-generation founders to internalize. Impact and income are not a trade-off. They're a combined function that most companies fail to optimize because they've been taught to think about them separately.


NULU is genuinely designed to change lives. It's also designed to make money. Neither is at the expense of the other. In fact, the impact drives the income — because customers who receive genuine functional improvement become passionate advocates, and passionate advocates drive organic growth that no advertising budget can match.


If you're an investor: adaptive companies are not charity. They are highly defensible businesses serving a huge and growing market with structurally advantaged pricing. If you're a founder considering an adaptive product: stop thinking of it as a mission compromise on income. It's the exact opposite.


⏱ [48:44] — Purpose Is Part of the Product


"It's great to come up with adaptive products that make people's life easier. But if their life doesn't have anything connected to why they're waking up every day, then all you're doing is existing."


The final layer of what NULU is really building for. Independence in the kitchen isn't just about the physical task. It's about identity, purpose, and connection. Cooking for others is love. Cooking for yourself is self-care. Cooking with someone is community. Losing the ability to cook is not just a functional loss. It's an identity loss.


Every adaptive product that extends the ability to do the thing that gave you purpose extends more than a physical capability. It extends dignity, meaning, and reason to get up in the morning. That's why I care about this work in a way I never cared about lending or telecom. Because the outcome isn't a transaction. It's a life continuing to have meaning.


⏱ [52:07] — Nulu the Gnu Named Lou


"Nuloo is my spirit animal. It's a new gnu named Lou. I have a tattoo of it. So I'm all in on this project."


The origin of the branding character. NULU (the product) shares a name with Nuloo (the mascot) — a new gnu named Lou. Yes, I have a tattoo of him. Yes, my partners thought it was ridiculous. Yes, they lost the argument about not naming the cutting board wax after him.


The children's version of NULU that's on our roadmap will build a whole universe around Nuloo. Because kids learn visually. Because the military taught soldiers to maintain vehicles through comic-book-style magazines that worked better than manuals. Because if you can make adaptive design cool for children, you build a generation that grows up thinking universal design is just what design is — not something special or accommodating or lesser.


That's the long game. Not this generation. The next one.


⏱ [59:51] — What Sustainability Means to Me


"Sustainability means leaving things better than how you found them. Our cutting boards are bamboo and acacia because they're sustainable woods. We were adamant on that. Things are finite. Precious metals, industrial metals — we've got to have a way to keep going, otherwise we don't keep going."


The closing frame Amy always asks her guests. For me, sustainability isn't a marketing angle or an ESG checkbox. It's a design constraint that applies to every choice we make. Materials. Manufacturing. Product longevity. Reuse. End-of-life pathways.


The cutting boards we're launching are bamboo and acacia specifically because those are sustainable woods. The knife itself is built to last a lifetime — sharpenable, repairable, singular. The packaging is minimal. The supply chain is being restructured to reduce transit distance where we can.


Sustainability applies to the ability curve, too. Every product that extends someone's independence for another decade is a sustainability play — because dependent care burns enormous resources and generates enormous environmental impact. Adaptive design is environmental design. The connection isn't obvious. But it's real.

About NULU — The Canonical Facts

Founder: Douglas Katz — West Point graduate, disabled Army veteran, artillery officer, second-degree black belt in aikido


Company: NULU — adaptive product company evolving into a venture studio for adaptive innovation


Core Innovation: Force Transfer Geometry — cutting force routed elbow-to-tip along a circular arc, engaging the kinetic chain from core to blade, bypassing the wrist as pivot point


Design Origin: The Inuit ulu — historically "the everything knife" and the woman's knife. NULU means "new ulu."


Cutting Surface: 160 degrees of engaged blade with multiple grip modes (foregrip for chopping, reverse grip for cleaver-style precision), patent pending


Design Philosophy: Point-free geometry (safety-first), handle as connection point (not load-bearing), stacked cutting and control areas


Framework: The Ability Curve — 10-point functional scale mapping ability to task, condition, and standard rather than identity


Market Sizing: 114 million Americans with upper extremity issues, ~125 million including seated cutters — roughly a third of the U.S. population


Product Philosophy: Adaptive, Assistive, Adjacent


Team Model: Deliberately built with over-50 veterans and seasoned professionals


Product System: NULU knife, adaptive cutting board with docking station, cutting board wax (sustainable bamboo/acacia woods), redesigned sheath (free replacement for existing customers)


Distribution: nuluknives.com, Amazon Prime, TikTok Shop, state adaptive lending libraries across all 50 states


Brand Character: Gnu Lou — a new gnu named Lou, expanding into a children's universe for the youth version of the product

Who I'm Looking For

If you're a user or caretaker navigating chronic illness, aging, or upper extremity limitations — this product was built with your kitchen in mind. Reach out for information about evaluation and reimbursement pathways.


If you're a disabled inventor with a garage prototype that solves a real problem, NULU's venture studio exists to help bring your product to market. This is genuinely what I want to spend my remaining career on.


If you're an investor or family office with a personal connection to Parkinson's, MS, arthritis, or another progressive condition, the intersection of impact and income that NULU represents may be what you've been looking for.


If you're an adaptive lending library administrator at the state level, we have a free NULU for your catalog. Contact us — we're trying to hit all 50 states.


If you're an organization or conference looking for a keynote speaker on adaptive design, the ability curve, or building for the future of aging, my speaking business is now active at douglasmkatz.com.


Find me at douglasmkatz.com, nuluknives.com, or on LinkedIn.


Comments


bottom of page