Why is Skot Carruth holding a pitchfork?

????? this thing on?

I logged into LinkedIn today for the first time in about 6 months and thought it was time for an update.

First, apologies to my colleagues who have reached out on here and didn't receive a response. I didn't mean to ghost you. Well, I did, I suppose... but it's not personal. Allow me to make up for that with a story.

In June 2022, I decided it was time for a sabbatical. Etymologically speaking, it was overdue by about 7 years. Emerson Taymor and I started working together in late 2008, and formed Philosophie in 2009. At first it was a pretty casual arrangement. We took whatever work we could find, and focused on always providing exceptional work on time and on budget. We did everything with craftsmanship, because we loved design and creating things of value. It was very aligned with my personal mission to bring beauty, meaning, and connection into the world.

It took us several years to hit our stride as a business. Around 2014–2015 we started adopting what were (and in my opinion, still are) pretty radical agile design and development practices. Within a year or two the industry started to catch up—at least to the terminology—and we were able to sell our work in a more practical and profitable way. Soon our methods became highly in-demand in the corporate world, and our business began to flourish.?

With this success came a lot of changes. My personal role evolved from being a hands-on-keyboard designer/developer and more of an executive. My days became split between sales, marketing, hiring, HR, and business analysis. Together with Emerson, Nick Giancola , and Jerry Signori, we built an awesome team of leaders that included people like Taneen J. , Lara Fedoroff , Lane Goldstone , and Chris Chandler among many others. I believe all of us entered roles that were beyond our experience but not capability, and we had fun riding the learning curve together. I’m extremely proud of how we ran the business: always maintaining sight of our values and putting our people first.

In 2019, Emerson and I celebrated a decade of working together. Upon reflection, we considered how the company was evolving and we were wary of how far extended the macroeconomy felt to us. We saw how challenging it was to build good software quickly within the large corporations that made up the majority of our clientele, and how fragile innovation consulting might become in a recessionary environment. We contemplated how we might weather such a storm, and after evaluating strategies such as scaling down to preserve capital, scaling up through acquisition to diversify our client base and find economies of scale, and selling, we decided that the latter was our most favorable option.

After a 9-month search, we found InfoBeans and joined their family. Though the fit wasn’t obvious at first, the more we got to know Mitesh Bohra , Avinash Sethi , and Siddharth Sethi , it became clear that there was no other management team or company culture that valued its people the same way we did. I think there’s a lot to be said about a company that has grown as much as theirs that is still led by its three cofounders, and Emerson and I were excited to join their team and learn from them.

I continued to lead the Philosophie Group as a subsidiary of InfoBeans for two years, which was extremely challenging largely due to the pandemic and sociopolitical unrest of 2020. Our team evolved a lot during this time, as we gradually found ways to better serve our Fortune 500 clients and collaborate with our colleagues overseas. By the time 2022 came around, I longed to get back to building things. So I stepped down as CEO to work closely with one of our larger clients for a few months before taking the leap and starting my sabbatical.

So how’s it been going? Great! I moved to Seattle, spent a lot of time traveling the world with my partner Anastasia Shelest , and accidentally started another business. Oops. Founders gonna found.

I purchased a property with my closest friend Sean Davis, and we turned it into an Airbnb village called SkyCamp. We’ve spent the last 6 months building it out, and it's been great to develop new skills like interior design, SketchUp, Property Management Software, building fires, chopping down trees, and dealing with plumbing emergencies. I'm also planning to take the real estate license exam in January.

So what’s next? I’m extending my sabbatical for another 6 months, but I’m starting to come out of my professional shell. So here I am back on LinkedIn!

Friends and colleagues, I’d really like to connect with you in the coming months and catch up. Our industry is entering a new phase of austerity, one that I’ve seen coming for a long time. It’s going to be painful for many, but I think we will be better for it. Frankly, I'm excited its finally here. I think we’re going to see the next wave of truly innovative startups come out of the next ten years, and I AM HERE FOR IT!

My calendar is wide open, so please reach out to me if you want to talk about it. I want to hear what you’re up to, as well as your hopes, fears, and predictions for the next decade in technology.

I would also love to connect with anyone interested in real estate investing, as it’s become a huge passion of mine over the last couple of years.

So here’s to reconnecting, and an industrious 2023! ??