About
Hello! I'm a technology enthusiast with a deep affinity for adventures that push my limits, like flying planes, scuba diving, backcountry skiing, mountaineering, and things of that nature. I like to write, podcast, film, and share links about these interests in a newsletter (sign up!) – I send one or two posts per month. A few examples here, here, and here.
Professionally, I'm a product manager at Secureframe, a fully-remote cybersecurity startup. Previously, I built machine intelligence products at Doma and eBay and hung out a lot in the Bay Area.
Some products I've helped build:
- Secureframe Trust: For many companies, obtaining a SOC 2 Type I/II report (or similar) is required to unlock sales. Secureframe Comply makes it much cheaper and faster to receive your report and maintain your compliance posture for every audit down the line. Trust is a new offering from our company that complements Comply to help businesses quickly and easily stand up a trust center, answer security questionnaires with AI, and have these features pull from a common knowledge base.
- Doma Intelligence Platform: A title and escrow processing software suite that uses machine intelligence to eliminate the closing time for home refis and purchases. Read more at doma.com.
- eBay HelpBot: HelpBot is a product backed by a natural language understanding engine to automatically resolve issues on eBay members' behalf. Users can submit returns, obtain refunds, or get disputes with sellers adjudicated without having to call or chat with a person.
Projects and interests
Most of my interests center around stories of one kind or another. There's nothing I love better than a well-told tale, be it in writing, the spoken word, film, video games, or virtual reality. I also like pushing myself to do cool things that lend themselves to storytelling. My main themes:
Technology. I derive a lot of enjoyment from solving problems with software. A big part of that work is learning the potential of new technologies to improve the way we live. Working in this space, there's a lot of hype to sift through, but I try to bear in mind Amara's Law: The impact of new technological developments on society is overestimated in the short term and underestimated in the long term. I've written about ways to ferret out compelling user problems, the weird stuff going on in crypto-land, and I link to articles about trends in the tech world in my newsletters.
Adventure travel. I like to make mini-documentaries about backpacking, scuba diving, skiing, mountaineering, overlanding, and camping around the world with Fiona, my wife. I've also written about jaunts to the Andes, Scandinavia, and other places. At the beginning of 2022, we decided to set out on the road while working remotely. I log a lot of our outdoor activity on Strava if you'd like to connect there!
Military history and national security topics. I'm a big fan of Dan Carlin's Hardcore History podcast, books like Maxwell Hastings' Inferno: The World at War 1939-1945 and War on the Rocks. I've written about the terrifying series of nuclear weapons accidents during the Cold War. I'm also transfixed and horrified by the events in Ukraine.
Cooking: I recently came by a smoker and started to publish a lot of short-form videos about my experiments.
Aviation. I am a certificated private pilot and I also have a deep interest in virtual reality-supporting flying games like DCS World and Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020. I've written a startup guide to DCS in VR here.
Systems of productivity and personal betterment. I've written a bit about my own system, which blends the Getting Things Done methodology with other habits and home-grown processes. Generally, I like tweaking the way that I work to eke more out of each day. I also track various metrics related to my health, happiness, relationships and more. See my roundups of 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018 and reflections upon turning 30.
Virtual reality and video games. I didn't grow up with a game console as a kid and so I'm making up for it now. In early 2020 I custom-built a PC and, ever since, I've been exploring games like Portal, Doom and others on Steam, along with Skyrim and Half-Life: Alyx in VR.
Lists
I love "top fives" and lists from people I follow (check out James Clear's reading list, for example). I wrote my lists mostly as a record for personal reference, but figured they also might be interesting to friends:
Nick Roberts
Nick Roberts
Nick Roberts