That DOC Thing — What’s That All About?

An old friend asked me what I was up to the other day, and despite two years having passed since I started getting that question (here’s my first post on the subject), I realized I’ve not made much progress on a concise answer. Usually I’ll list the various projects that currently fill my day — working on the P&G Signal conference, trying my best to be a good board member at a number of media, tech, and data companies, managing various investments, and running a new health event I co-founded last year called DOC.

“Wait,” my friends invariably ask. “Why are you involved in a health project?!”

It’s a fair question. DOC is the eighth company I’ve had a hand in starting, but the first in the health category. It’s something of a left turn in a career that started with covering Apple as a reporter during its Macintosh heyday. That led to an obsession with the impact of digital technology on society, which led to Wired in the early 90s, The Industry Standard in the late 90s, The Search (and this blog) in the early 2000s, and covering (and participating in) the resurgence of the web, social media and digital advertising from 2004–2014 (Web 2 Summit, Federated Media, and Sovrn). By then, I was starting to become skeptical of tech’s power, so I started a company that identified and celebrated mission-driven startups (NewCo — 2013–2019).