The 360-Degree Pivot: My Conversation on Behind the Numbers
- dougkatz8
- Jul 20
- 16 min read
On Perseverance as the Boat and Lessons as the Wake, Why We Went Back to Adaptive, and Why the Over-50 Team Is My Trade Secret
I sat down with Dave Bookbinder on Behind the Numbers — a show that goes beyond the data to explore the people, stories, and insights that drive business success. Dave is a business valuation expert and best-selling author, which meant the conversation kept snapping back to the questions founders actually need to answer: how do you scale responsibly, what KPIs matter, what would you tell yourself on day one? We covered the 360-degree pivot we just made back to adaptive, the Amazon uptime problem I didn't see coming, why my son's line about "it happened when it should happen" has become one of my guiding principles, and why perseverance is the boat and every lesson is the wake behind it. 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.
⏱ [1:04] — The Third Act That's Actually About Product
"I've been fortunate to have a third act rooted in product, which I really never have been before. My hobbies all kind of come together with helping this stuff."
Grew up in Michigan. West Point. Five years in the Army. Then a wandering corporate career that included telecom, lending, and a couple of side businesses that didn't quite land. And now the third act — inventor of NULU, and also inventor of a second product we're rolling out called Golfresco, a bistro/utility table for golf carts and UTVs that mounts universally.
Two very different products, one design philosophy. Both are what I now call simple improvements — small changes with outsized impact. NULU improves an ancient tool for people who've been left behind by traditional design. Golfresco improves the utility of a space that manufacturers haven't optimized. Same underlying thinking: look at something everyone accepts as good enough, ask why, and if the answer isn't compelling, redesign it.
If you're a maker with multiple hobbies you've never monetized, this is the encouragement to look at them again. Your hobbies are the raw material of your third act. Mine were.
⏱ [2:23] — Go With What You Know
"It was my own issues. That's a good lesson for entrepreneurs — go with what you know in the beginning. The narrative and everything is easier that way."
The origin of NULU: I couldn't cook because my shoulder was failing. My wife had gifted me a knifemaking class. I had a workshop full of scrap materials. I found a circular saw blade. I'd been playing with circular designs already (pizza cutters, ulus). I built a rough prototype. It worked. That's the whole spark.
The lesson I keep giving other founders: the easiest business to build is the one that solves your own problem first. Because you already understand the customer intimately (they're you). You already understand the pain (you feel it). You already have the narrative (it's your life). Every other business requires you to learn your customer. This one, you already are.
Later, if it works, you scale to customers who aren't you. But the foundation is your own honest experience with the problem. That's the strongest starting point any founder has.
⏱ [4:23] — Your First Six or Seven Businesses Won't Work
"I'm living the reality of your first six or seven businesses will not be viable for some reason. With this one, I was able to bring to bear all those lessons — a good idea, a good branding angle, something protectable, filling a need."
The statistic I keep citing because I've now lived it. Most successful founders have started 6-7 businesses before one hits. Airport-luggage-kinetic-charging idea. Prepping business built on an insurance-model quiz. Leadership development play. All of them taught me things. None of them scaled.
NULU is what happens when a founder finally has the accumulated lessons of the previous failures and a good idea and a protectable IP angle and a genuine need. Any one of those without the others produces another failure. All of them together produces something that finally works.
If you're on business number two or three and starting to doubt yourself — don't. You're accumulating the reps. The one that hits will only work because the previous ones didn't.
⏱ [5:24] — The 360-Degree Pivot
"We started with impact and adaptive. The siren song of mass market pulled us away. And in the last two weeks, we pivoted all the way back to adaptive. It's a 360-degree pivot — validation that the original direction was right."
Dave's timing on this conversation was almost too good. In the last two weeks — literally days before we recorded — we finished a major pivot back to our original adaptive positioning after spending months trying to go mainstream. It's a full 360-degree pivot. Same product. Same design. Very different market strategy.
Here's what happened. We started NULU deeply rooted in the adaptive space with the ability curve framework, evaluation programs, and disability community partnerships. Our CEO — brought on for his traditional knife industry expertise — pulled us toward mainstream. The siren song of "this could be for everyone" is real, and I don't blame him for hearing it. Every advisor tells you the mainstream market is bigger.
But the seeds we'd planted in the adaptive space started bearing fruit while we were pivoting away from it. State adaptive programs got interested. Community advocates reached out. The reimbursement possibilities started to reveal themselves. And we realized we were about to walk away from the exact market that most needed us — and, structurally, was best positioned to actually pay for the product.
So we pivoted back. Not because mainstream was wrong. Because adaptive was more right, and we should have gone deeper into it before trying to broaden.
⏱ [7:11] — The DARPA Model, Applied to Adaptive
"A lot of my West Point classmates went the DARPA route — create a product for military use, get significant funding, then take it civilian. Dual-use technology. I think there's a similar argument for heavy adaptive work, then taking what's best into mass market."
This is the strategic reframe that made the 360-degree pivot make sense. The DARPA model works: solve for the hardest use case (military), get funded to solve it, then civilianize the technology once the hard problem is cracked. Products that emerge from that pipeline — GPS, the internet, GORE-TEX, countless medical technologies — end up in mainstream markets in ways that would have been impossible if they'd started there.
Adaptive is the same opportunity in reverse. Solve for the hardest cases (severe disability, chronic illness, aging with progressive conditions), fund it through the mechanisms designed for that market (state programs, adaptive offices, reimbursement pathways), and then let the design innovations diffuse into mainstream because they're objectively better products. That's the pipeline. We were trying to run it in reverse. Now we're running it correctly.
⏱ [7:53] — Reimbursement Changes the Pricing Conversation
"We were saying 'maybe our price is too high.' It isn't — if you're in a place where people can get reimbursed. Then you can get truly what the utility is worth. We're beta-ing a tool where buyers can enter their situation and we guide them on where they'd most likely get reimbursement."
The financial reframe that made the pivot financially defensible. In mainstream retail, our price point matters because the buyer is the payer. In adaptive markets, the buyer is often not the payer. State programs, VA benefits, HSA/FSA, insurance reimbursement in some categories. Which means our price can reflect the actual utility of the product rather than the price-sensitivity of the buyer.
We're building a tool right now — in beta — where a NULU purchaser can enter information about their situation (diagnosis, state, insurance) and we give them personalized guidance on where they're most likely to be able to get the knife reimbursed. Plus verbiage and documentation they can use to make the case. That's not a feature. That's a business model. And it's exactly the kind of moat that traditional knife companies can't replicate because they don't have the community relationships that make it work.
⏱ [9:00] — The Cutting System (Not the Single Knife)
"This is now the anchor of a cutting system. Our roadmap includes an adaptive cutting board that holds food in place, and a personal consumption version — my MS classmate said he used it to eat a steak for the first time in 10 years."
The 360-degree pivot didn't just relocate the market — it reshaped the product roadmap. NULU is no longer a single knife trying to serve every use case. It's the anchor of an integrated cutting system built around adaptive design principles.
The cutting board with integrated stability — because a lot of users with bilateral upper-body issues can cut safely with NULU but can't hold the food in place. The board solves that.
A personal-consumption version — smaller, more suited to restaurants and dinner tables. A West Point classmate of mine with MS used the current NULU to eat a steak for the first time in ten years. Then he said "I wish I had one I could take to a restaurant." That's the next product.
Handle variations for different symptom clusters (grip loss, tremor, arthritis, weakness).
The reimbursement Navigator tool — helping users unlock the payment mechanisms available to them.
None of these are separate businesses. They're an integrated system serving one community deeply, rather than a single product trying to serve everyone shallowly.
⏱ [10:14] — Why We Won't Have Real Competition
"No large knife company is going to try and do what we're doing because they're optimized for traditional knife development. That's where their branding is. In a way, we might not have competition — or minimal — because it seems niche. But when you go deep, redefine the task, redefine disability, the market grows."
The strategic insight that most founders miss when they think about competition. Large incumbents in any category are optimized for their existing product line. Their manufacturing, their branding, their sales channels, their marketing narrative — all of it is built around what they already sell. Which means when a genuinely different approach emerges in an adjacent market, they can't easily follow.
Big knife companies won't chase adaptive. Their machines can't make our geometry. Their brands are built on tradition. Their sales channels are built on Williams-Sonoma and Bass Pro, not adaptive lending libraries. And they don't have the community relationships that make the reimbursement business model work.
Which means our competitive advantage isn't just the product. It's the positioning — a positioning that's structurally hard for incumbents to attack. And it's a market that looks small until you understand the ability curve, at which point it becomes 150+ million Americans.
⏱ [11:20] — The Ego Death Prerequisite for Pivoting
"I studied Zen through martial arts — the concept of ego death and beginner's mind. Every entrepreneur should go get feedback. Because if you get into your own groove and convince yourself you're right, feedback gets interpreted defensively — not in a way that helps you pivot."
The reason most founders don't pivot when they should isn't lack of data. It's ego. They've committed publicly to a direction. They've told investors, employees, friends, family. Reversing that direction feels like admitting defeat. So they don't. They rationalize. They interpret disconfirming feedback as noise. And they run their business into the ground defending a position that stopped serving them months ago.
Zen has a concept I love: ego death as an aspirational discipline. Not literal (impossible as a full state), but directional. Reduce your attachment to being right. Reduce your investment in the version of yourself that made the earlier decision. Ask the question again as if you were hearing about the business for the first time. What would you do?
That's what let us do the 360-degree pivot. Every one of us on the team had to be willing to say "the mainstream direction we've been pursuing for months is wrong, and we need to go back." Nobody dug in. Nobody defended a position. Everybody looked at the data and voted with what it showed. That's what a functional team looks like — and it only works when the ego death discipline is shared.
⏱ [12:07] — Scale Awareness Before You Scale Production
"We haven't asked for investment. We're bootstrapped. We're not in a foot race to scale in a way that doesn't work. We slowed down and said — this is a visual and tactile product. Scaling advertising won't help the way getting it in the hands of people who need it will. So we scale awareness before we scale production."
The counterintuitive scaling advice I want more first-time founders to hear. Not every business needs to scale fast. In fact, most fail because they scaled too fast, spent too much on customer acquisition before they understood the customer, and ran out of runway before finding product-market fit.
NULU is a visual and tactile product. Nobody buys it from a Facebook ad. They buy it after touching one, seeing a demo, or being handed one by an occupational therapist. Which means our scaling strategy isn't ad spend. It's awareness distribution — getting physical knives into the hands of trusted intermediaries (adaptive offices, OTs, community advocates, media hosts like Dave) so that when a user asks the question "is there a better knife?", someone in their orbit has the answer.
Every state has an adaptive lending library. By law. We're giving each of them a NULU for their catalog. My goal is to be in all 50 by end of January. That's not production scaling. That's awareness architecture, and it's the right sequence for a product like ours.
⏱ [13:41] — What Keeps Me Up at Night: Production Scaling
"What keeps me up at night is 100% how we're going to scale production. We're currently offshore because there was no other way — no U.S. knife manufacturer had the know-how to produce this geometry at scale. Tariffs don't help us. But if we have to lift and shift to another manufacturer, we have the CAD files — it won't be hard."
The honest founder answer to a question Dave asked about scaling risks. Our biggest exposure is manufacturing. We're offshore because every U.S. knife manufacturer we approached told us their machines couldn't make our design. Tariffs and supply chain disruptions hit us disproportionately because we can't reshore in a hurry.
The mitigation is that NULU is mechanically simple. There are no gears, no electronics, no complex assembly. If we need to move manufacturers, we have CAD files, established specs, and a known-good prototype. It won't be seamless — we'll take a hit on price during any transition — but it's not existential the way it would be for a product with dozens of interlocking components.
If you're a founder in a similar position (physical product, offshore manufacturing, tariff exposure), the resilience play is exactly this: keep your product simple enough that manufacturer switching costs are manageable. Complexity is a moat, but it's also a lock-in. Simplicity is exposed to competition, but it's also nimble.
⏱ [15:22] — Commercial Avengers
"You almost have to create a commercial Avengers. People who had wisdom, understood the product, had resources, had the ability to withstand the startup phase. And the ability to let go — I kill myself for not recognizing that before 53."
The metaphor I keep coming back to. Every founder needs to assemble a commercial Avengers — a team where each member has a specific superpower and where the sum is dramatically greater than the parts.
For NULU, the composition was:
Someone with 35 years of knife industry expertise
Someone with product design mastery
Someone with operations discipline (spreadsheet fluency I lack)
Someone with IP legal expertise
Someone with military network access (me)
Someone with community connections in adaptive spaces
Every one of those people is objectively better than I am at what they do. My job is to be the ideation engine, the storyteller, the pitch guy, the connector. Their job is to translate ideation into execution. Neither role is complete without the other.
The founder who tries to be all six roles ships nothing. The founder who admits their weaknesses and builds around them ships everything. The math is that simple. And it's the math I couldn't see clearly until I was 53. Younger founders — please see it earlier.
⏱ [16:53] — This Is Retirement
"I don't want to swing for the fences. I want this to be my third act. And by third act — this is retirement for me. Building teams where it's fun, you can yell at each other, it's like a family. If you don't build a culture that way, you can never fully realize how good a thing could be."
The founder philosophy I want to make loud. I'm not building NULU to sell it in five years and buy a beach house. I'm building it because building it is what I want to do with the rest of my working life. This is retirement, functionally. Not the version where you stop. The version where you finally start doing the work you were meant to do all along, without the corporate structures that made you spend thirty years working on things you didn't care about.
If more people over 50 saw entrepreneurship this way — as retirement into meaning rather than a bet on a lottery-ticket exit — I think we'd see very different companies emerge. Companies with patient capital, deep culture, cross-generational teams, and product roadmaps measured in decades rather than quarters. That's the company I'm trying to build.
⏱ [19:25] — The Trade Secret Is Finding the People
"My trade secret is going to be finding these people and continuing to build the team. The over-50 market — the ageism of our country is creating opportunity that if we don't figure out is going to be a lost opportunity."
The macro observation I keep making. American ageism has quietly created a huge pool of highly experienced, wisdom-rich professionals over 50 who are either retired, semi-retired, or under-utilized in roles that don't tap their full capability. Most companies see them as a cost problem. I see them as the single most under-priced resource in the American economy.
The formula that's working for NULU: over-50 professionals with domain wisdom, plus AI as an accelerator (artificial intelligence combined with artificial wisdom — the phrase isn't mine, but it should be), plus a small number of younger operators with the energy and hours to execute. That combination produces companies that would be structurally impossible ten years ago. The tools are cheaper than ever. The talent is more available than ever. The pattern is repeatable.
If you're a founder over 50, this is your unlock. If you're a founder under 40, hire someone over 50. The blend is where the compounding happens.
⏱ [21:57] — The KPIs That Actually Matter Right Now
"Sales first. Then reimbursement — because it's an impact KPI and a financial KPI. Then adaptive program signups — 50 states, one knife each, by end of January. And operational KPIs we haven't figured out yet, because the fog of war is real."
The honest founder answer to Dave's KPI question. Right now, we're tracking:
Unit sales — because everything else follows from actual purchases
Reimbursement pathway signups — because this is the moat and the impact simultaneously
State adaptive program placements — one free knife to each state's lending library, goal is all 50 by end of January
Product roadmap velocity — one new product per year minimum, ideally two
Amazon uptime and operational KPIs still to be defined — because we just discovered we needed them the hard way (see next section)
The KPIs that matter change dramatically as a business moves through phases. What we're measuring today isn't what we'll measure a year from now. That's fine. What matters is being honest about which stage you're in and calibrating the metrics accordingly.
⏱ [23:32] — The Amazon Uptime Problem I Didn't See Coming
"We had an issue with Amazon the other day. Their fulfillment centers are highly tech-based, but if they go down and you have inventory there, you can't sell. We had items sitting on reserve for three weeks. We didn't expect that."
Founder war story for anyone building on top of Amazon FBA or similar platforms. We had inventory sitting in Amazon fulfillment centers, sales were slower than expected, and we spent weeks trying to figure out whether it was a marketing problem or a product problem. Turned out it was neither. It was an Amazon technical issue that had been quietly holding inventory in reserve status.
Lesson: when you build on top of a platform you don't control, you inherit the platform's failure modes. If Amazon has a technical issue, your inventory is stranded regardless of demand. If TikTok changes an algorithm, your organic reach evaporates. If Facebook shuts down your ad account, your acquisition funnel collapses.
Operational KPIs need to include platform health monitoring alongside all the business metrics. And ideally, your business should never be dependent on a single platform. Diversify distribution the same way you'd diversify supply chain.
⏱ [24:53] — Persevere
"If I could whisper something to myself on day one, it would be — persevere. Because my son said something to me once: 'It happened when it should happen. Everything that led up to this is what created where it is now.'"
The single-word answer to Dave's day-one question. Persevere. Because every setback along the way was actually the training that made the next stage possible.
I had a manufacturing partner early on — another West Point grad, someone I implicitly trusted — who was out over his skis. That relationship cost me months. Transactionally, I should have pulled the plug faster. But the lesson I learned about how to develop trust, what questions to ask, and never to take my eye off the ball — that lesson is now paying off in the next venture (Golfresco), which is 90 days from market. Without the earlier pain, I wouldn't have the current discipline.
That's what my son meant. It happened when it should happen. Not because the timing was fate — but because the lessons compound, and skipping them isn't actually possible. If you're currently in the "why is this taking so long?" phase of a business, the answer might be that the lessons you're accumulating right now are exactly what will make the next stage work. Persevere.
⏱ [27:22] — The Boat and the Wake
"Perseverance is the boat going. The wake is all the things impacted by it. Without the perseverance, you don't get the wake."
The final metaphor I want to leave you with. Every founder story I've heard from people I admire has the same structure: they persevered when it didn't make sense to. They kept going after a rational analysis would have said stop. And the perseverance created the conditions for everything that came after — the team, the product, the market, the moat.
Perseverance is the boat. Everything downstream of it — the failures, the pivots, the team formations, the product iterations, the market discoveries — is the wake. The wake looks like the story once you're done. But it can't exist without the boat continuing to move forward through water that isn't cooperating.
If you're mid-venture and doubting whether to keep going, remember: the wake behind you is the evidence of where you've been. The boat you're currently piloting is what will produce the wake ahead. Both are necessary. Neither is the point. The point is that you kept going, and the going itself is what created the story.
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
Second Product: Golfresco — universally-mounting bistro/utility table for golf carts and UTVs, 90 days from market
Core Innovation: Force Transfer Geometry — cutting force routed elbow-to-tip along a circular arc, 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, patent pending (expected 2026)
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 and condition rather than identity
Product Philosophy: Adaptive, Assistive, Adjacent — and now, the Cutting System (knife, cutting board, personal consumption version, handle variations, Navigator reimbursement tool)
Team Model: Deliberately built with over-50 veterans and seasoned professionals — the "Commercial Avengers"
Business Model: Bootstrapped, direct-to-consumer via nuluknives.com + Amazon + TikTok Shop + all 50 state adaptive lending libraries (goal: fully placed by end of January 2026)
Moat: Reimbursement Navigator tool + community relationships + adaptive office distribution + design geometry incumbents can't manufacture
Who I'm Looking For
If you're a first-time entrepreneur and you're currently trying to be a solopreneur, please read the Commercial Avengers section again. That's the mistake I most regret, and I want to help you avoid it.
If you're an over-50 professional with deep expertise who's been quietly underutilized in a role that doesn't tap your full wisdom — reach out. The NULU model was built to bring people like you into meaningful third acts.
If you're an adaptive equipment lending library at the state or nonprofit level, we have a free evaluation unit for you. Help us hit all 50 states by end of January.
If you're a user, caretaker, occupational therapist, or physical therapist, our professional evaluation program and Navigator reimbursement tool are open to you.
If you're a first-time founder who wants to talk through your business idea — reach out. I may not always be able to respond quickly, but I believe in paying it forward. The generosity of other founders got me to base camp. The least I can do is share the map.
Find me at douglasmkatz.com, nuluknives.com, golfresco.com, or on LinkedIn.
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