Jesse Patel

CEO

I'm an aspiring mad scientist.

Since I was in high school, I wanted to be an inventor. By some miracle, I got into Stanford, graduating in 2003 with a degree in product design and engineering. Upon graduating, I had one really interesting and strange job in the social innovation space, and then attempted to start a string of failed businesses and non-profits.

Fast forward a few years, I had a job I couldn't keep up with, a desire to create, and a vision for a better way to organize my work. So I taught myself to code, in order to build this fractal information management system I had in my head.

I ended up building Workflowy, a million dollar business that I still run, and am still in a loving but semi-abusive relationship with today.

I'm currently in a phase of my life where I'm trying to spread my mad scientist wings and really learn to fly. I have so many visions, many of which are 3% likely to succeed at best, but if they do, would be important. And I'm drawn to them. So I'm preparing to spread my wings, jump off that cliff, and fall.

Essentially, I'm in a process of accepting myself for what I am and embrace the adventure of exploring my almost-impossible-this-will-work type ideas.

P.S. At the same, I'm trying to build an organization that can take care of all the responsible stuff and build out the core business of my company.

P.P.S. On another note, I have twin 8 year old girls, and parenting is also an important and fun part of my life.

P.P.P.S. I wanted to be a children's book illustrator and author, but Stanford didn't let me design my own major around it and the dream died. Oh, what could have been.