An operating and advisory house, built at the bench of one craft.

Patina is the house for my life’s work: building companies that last.

Every craft I admire works the same way. You take a thing down to its raw ingredients and build it back up. Then you spend years refining it, long after most people would call it done. Keep at it long enough and the work takes on a patina, the finish only time and use can give.

Building companies is my craft, and I’ve been at it my whole working life.

I started my first company out of high school. We raised a few million dollars and grew to more than 50 people. Then, in a hard stretch, my board replaced me as CEO. Looking back, they were right. But it took me years to understand why.

I spent the next few years chasing moonshots: raising venture capital, going big, building to sell. I came to call it the arrival fallacy, trading today for an exit someday. I wanted a slower, more permanent way to build.

In 2016, my friend Adam and I started a small business with $750. It felt different from the start. It has been profitable every year since. We shaped it slowly and on purpose, and it got better each year. It paid for the next company. Then we acquired a third, and a fourth. That became Decada Group.

I’ve sat in the CEO’s chair. I’ve raised venture capital, and I’ve personally guaranteed debt. Across the 20+ companies I’ve started, acquired, or backed, I’ve hired the CEOs who run them, backed them, and sometimes replaced them.

I’m not done answering any of them. Patina is the house where that work lives.