Frenzy AI
ROLE
AI / Consumer Technology / Commerce
ORGANIZATION
Frenzy
IMPACT
Company & Product Building
Selected Proof
Co-founder + CMO, Company + product strategy, Go-to-market + growth, Partnerships, Brand + positioning, Fundraising + company building
YearS
2016 - 2020
01 / BUILDING FROM ZERO
Before there was a company, there was a problem we wanted to understand.
I started building Frenzy while I was still a student at USC. The original idea explored how artificial intelligence could make online product discovery more intuitive and personal, helping people search based on what they actually wanted rather than navigating rigid categories and filters.
There was no established role for me to step into. Co-founding the company meant working across whatever the business needed: shaping the proposition, product and company strategy, building the brand, finding early users and partners, raising capital, recruiting a team and continually translating what we were learning into the next version of the product.
It was my first experience of building in true ambiguity.
When nothing exists yet, strategy and execution are almost impossible to separate.
PRODUCT
Turn a broad idea into something people could actually use.
MARKET
Learn who cared enough about the problem to change their behaviour.
COMPANY
Build the people, story and resources required to keep going.
01 / BUILDING FROM ZERO
Before there was a company, there was a problem we wanted to understand.
I started building Frenzy while I was still a student at USC. The original idea explored how artificial intelligence could make online product discovery more intuitive and personal, helping people search based on what they actually wanted rather than navigating rigid categories and filters.
There was no established role for me to step into. Co-founding the company meant working across whatever the business needed: shaping the proposition, product and company strategy, building the brand, finding early users and partners, raising capital, recruiting a team and continually translating what we were learning into the next version of the product.
It was my first experience of building in true ambiguity.
When nothing exists yet, strategy and execution are almost impossible to separate.
PRODUCT
Turn a broad idea into something people could actually use.
MARKET
Learn who cared enough about the problem to change their behaviour.
COMPANY
Build the people, story and resources required to keep going.
02 / TURNING AN IDEA INTO A PRODUCT
The product had to get smarter by understanding people better.
Frenzy explored a different approach to product discovery: using AI to understand a shopper's preferences and intent, then translating those signals into more relevant recommendations.
The challenge was not only building the technology. It was figuring out what information mattered, how people expressed preference, how recommendations should be surfaced, and whether the experience was meaningfully better than the search tools people already had.
Building the product required constant movement between technology, user behaviour and business strategy. Each iteration created new questions about what to build, who to build it for and where the product could create enough value to become a company.
A product is not the idea made visible. It is what remains after the idea meets reality.
USER / Learn before assuming.
An early-stage product gives you very little distance from the people using it. Feedback, behaviour and failed assumptions continuously changed what we thought the product needed to become.
TECHNOLOGY / AI only mattered if it created a better experience.
The technology had to disappear behind something useful. The point was not to demonstrate intelligence, but to reduce the distance between what someone wanted and what they could find.
ITERATION / The company and product evolved together.
Changes in the product reshaped the proposition. Changes in the market reshaped the product. Building meant continuously moving between the two.
02 / TURNING AN IDEA INTO A PRODUCT
The product had to get smarter by understanding people better.
Frenzy explored a different approach to product discovery: using AI to understand a shopper's preferences and intent, then translating those signals into more relevant recommendations.
The challenge was not only building the technology. It was figuring out what information mattered, how people expressed preference, how recommendations should be surfaced, and whether the experience was meaningfully better than the search tools people already had.
Building the product required constant movement between technology, user behaviour and business strategy. Each iteration created new questions about what to build, who to build it for and where the product could create enough value to become a company.
A product is not the idea made visible. It is what remains after the idea meets reality.
USER / Learn before assuming.
An early-stage product gives you very little distance from the people using it. Feedback, behaviour and failed assumptions continuously changed what we thought the product needed to become.
TECHNOLOGY / AI only mattered if it created a better experience.
The technology had to disappear behind something useful. The point was not to demonstrate intelligence, but to reduce the distance between what someone wanted and what they could find.
ITERATION / The company and product evolved together.
Changes in the product reshaped the proposition. Changes in the market reshaped the product. Building meant continuously moving between the two.
03 / LEARNING TO BUILD A COMPANY
My first operating system was built by necessity.
Frenzy taught me how broad the work of building a company really is.
One day the problem was product. The next it was hiring, fundraising, positioning, partnerships, customer acquisition or deciding whether an assumption we had built around was wrong.
There was no clean handoff between functions because the functions themselves were still being created.
That experience fundamentally shaped the way I work today: I became comfortable moving between disciplines, finding the underlying problem and taking ownership of whatever had to happen next.
0 → 1
Building without a playbook
The early years of a company are full of decisions made with incomplete information. You rarely get certainty before you have to move.
What matters is the ability to learn quickly, change your mind when reality demands it and keep enough coherence across product, market and team that everyone is still building toward the same thing.
What it taught me
Frenzy was the first place I learned that building something new rarely respects functional boundaries.
A problem that looks like marketing can actually be a product problem. A product problem can reveal a positioning problem. A partnership can reshape the business model. The right next step is often only obvious once you get close enough to the work to see what is actually blocking progress.
That experience gave me an instinct I have carried into every company since:
When you're building from zero, your job is rarely the title you started with. Your job is whatever moves the company forward.
03 / LEARNING TO BUILD A COMPANY
My first operating system was built by necessity.
Frenzy taught me how broad the work of building a company really is.
One day the problem was product. The next it was hiring, fundraising, positioning, partnerships, customer acquisition or deciding whether an assumption we had built around was wrong.
There was no clean handoff between functions because the functions themselves were still being created.
That experience fundamentally shaped the way I work today: I became comfortable moving between disciplines, finding the underlying problem and taking ownership of whatever had to happen next.
0 → 1
Building without a playbook
The early years of a company are full of decisions made with incomplete information. You rarely get certainty before you have to move.
What matters is the ability to learn quickly, change your mind when reality demands it and keep enough coherence across product, market and team that everyone is still building toward the same thing.
What it taught me
Frenzy was the first place I learned that building something new rarely respects functional boundaries.
A problem that looks like marketing can actually be a product problem. A product problem can reveal a positioning problem. A partnership can reshape the business model. The right next step is often only obvious once you get close enough to the work to see what is actually blocking progress.
That experience gave me an instinct I have carried into every company since:
When you're building from zero, your job is rarely the title you started with. Your job is whatever moves the company forward.
