A Vision for Our Things

Many new companies are born from a desire to improve how a problem is solved, how an industry operates, how we live in the world, or even how the world functions. Most recently, these companies have been aligned with broader trends such as Web3 and blockchain, data and artificial intelligence, internet of things and industry 4.0, sustainable energy production and the green revolution, biotechnology and new frontiers of healthcare, hard tech and digital devices such as AR and VR, the future of work, and a wide range of consumer products that aim to improve our daily lives. Among these trends is the growing interest in how digital technology can be used to improve our physical world. A wide range of companies have arisen to improve the efficiency of construction, supply chain, energy distribution and use, agriculture and food, how we navigate the world, the vehicles we utilize, and the homes in which we live. 

As an architect and entrepreneur with 15 years of experience in firms improving design and construction, and startups using digital technology to address issues like cultural engagement, affordable housing, and the efficiency of legacy industries, I've seen many ways the digital can enhance the physical. This led Jaymes Waters (CTO) and I to found OurThings with the goal of using AI to create personal style profiles that simplify how we discover, plan, purchase, and manage furniture—and eventually other personal items—and pass them on to future generations. While I'm passionate about solving the inefficiencies in searching for home goods and believe many could benefit from better tools for home planning, budgeting, collaboration, and collection management, Jaymes and I founded OurThings to pursue a larger set of essential goals.

OurThings can play a crucial role in the shift toward a circular economy, where materials are tracked from sourcing to recycling. This transition is being accelerated by EU legislation, such as the Digital Product Passport, which mandates origin and recycling tracking for industries selling goods in the EU by 2030. Companies like Ikea, Unilever, and General Motors are already making significant progress toward this goal. Beyond supporting a circular economy, OurThings can encourage the consumption and preservation of high-quality, durable products that carry meaning across generations. This desire for lasting, meaningful goods extends to the homes they inhabit. We should advocate for buildings designed to evolve and endure, rather than being subject to planned obsolescence. This ethos of care and conservation should also encompass the built environment and the ecosystems that sustain us. By adopting this approach, we can gain a clearer understanding of the materials and energy required to support our way of life and make informed decisions about technologies and methods in a resource-constrained world. It will also help preserve cultural traditions and knowledge, ensuring continuity with the past and deepening our understanding of our origins. Along the way, we can capture the stories of those who have shaped our world—from the designers of products and spaces to those who have sold these items, built great estates, and left lasting legacies.

I strongly believe that digital technology has the capacity to bring about such a future because of a diverse set of capacities that the current generation of use cases of digital technology has demonstrated. At a fundamental level, the ability to represent physical things as a list, index, and data set within a specific organizational structure creates the possibility of optimal organization, performance, and intelligence of the underlying things. This capacity is enhanced by artificial intelligence and large language models that can improve our ability to recognize patterns, categorize things, learn our preferences and relationship to things, filter things that are relevant, and then help guide how we relate to and manage those things and their containers in the future. Through the introduction of generative AI, it becomes possible to streamline how we visualize and then actualize the future based on personal style and goals. More specifically, AI can drive the generation of images, plans, projects, budgets, timelines, and collaborators.

Beyond data and artificial intelligence, digital technology has an extraordinary capacity as media that represents things, people, spaces, and ideas. It has revolutionized publishing and transformed how people form social networks and socialize. In the process, it has changed how we add meaning to things and events. In this sense, it has the capacity to frame our world and provide a broader narrative. In doing so, it can help define the ethos of a platform around capturing and passing on this meaning through communities of those committed to conservation of the associated traditions and legacies. It also has the capacity to drive social gathering in those significant physical spaces.

The first two capacities are complemented by the ability for “hard tech” to transform how we relate to, design, build, and maintain space. This occurs via sensors, scanners, cameras, speakers and microphones, and automation that can optimize the efficiency of space while also capturing data that might inform how space is designed in the future. This capacity is complemented by augmented and virtual reality that can help us visualize a future space, bring an existing space to life, and add a new level of information to space and the things contained within. Through RFIDs, QR codes, micro computers, and other devices that tether the physical to the digital, we can better plan, track, visualize, and optimize our things and better tailor the spaces in which they exist to our lifestyle.

While Jaymes and I are motivated by the capacity of digital technology to bring about a more sustainable and culturally rich world, I am also driven by a number of personal experiences. Perhaps most importantly, I am motivated by a profound love for domestic architecture as well as the people and families who have committed their lives and fortunes to building great homes. I deeply believe in the value of such projects and have been enamored with the great estates that have resulted and that have been preserved across centuries. I am also deeply fascinated by how these homes relate to broader wealth, the sources of that wealth, and the culture that such wealth has generated. This interest has led to my passion for the great estates of Europe that began to be built in earnest during the Renaissance in Italy and that have extended to palaces and castles, chateaux, and country houses. 

My passion for these homes began while growing up in Hyde Park–a neighborhood in Chicago home to many late 19th century industrialists such as Swift, Ryerson, Armour, and Rosenwald. The neighborhood was also defined by the University of Chicago and the patronage of John D. Rockefeller as well as the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition. The home I grew up in belonged to this era of wealth and was designed by Rapp and Rapp (architects of over 400 theaters) for a former mayor of Chicago. It is located on the same block as Frank Lloyd Wright’s masterpiece, Robie House, and, in many ways, instilled a love for the architecture of the home as well as historic preservation that continued to be nurtured as I visited house museums around the world. 

An essential part of this love for domestic architecture, and all of the things contained within, is the hospitality that these homes facilitated. Their reception halls, salons, dining rooms, and ballrooms were all instrumental in anchoring a broader community. They are places that simultaneously carry on cultural traditions and host new ideas and ways of life. They are both sites of authority and judgment as well as transgression and the future. This capacity of the home to serve as a stage for events, conversations, and a community inspired my love of hosting friends, entertaining, and preparing meals to share together. The desire to welcome people into my home and make them feel welcome has continued through all phases of my life and informs the broader goal of not just making OurThings a tool for discovering and managing things, but a tool for bringing people together to share the cultural heritage they represent.

My love for domestic architecture was formalized while studying architecture at Cornell and fine art at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Over the course of my studies, it became clear that I was primarily interested in the reasons that drive people and cultures to live and build in a particular manner. I was less concerned with formal or material innovation and more concerned with how design could address the way in which a particular person wanted to live in a specific place and time. This led me away from valuing universal styles and towards embracing a diversity of appearances unified by a common set of deeply human motivations that cut across cultures and periods. It led to a deep knowledge of history, theory, and understanding of how culture has worked, been generated, and been sustained across centuries. It has also led to a desire to capture and support these motivations so that a wider range of people can dwell within spaces that suit their goals and lifestyle.

The time that I spent studying architecture also coincided with a culture of entrepreneurship driven by a group of people roughly my age who were instrumental in building Web2. Being close to people who went on to build multi-billion dollar companies that transformed how our society and businesses function, informed how I thought about the impact that a design firm could have on the world. It was a culture that left a lot of room for both product and process innovation and that led me to collaborate on a number of businesses whose focus ranged from art and culture to architecture, urbanism, media, manufacturing, and supply chain technology. It was the last experience that caused me to become immersed in circular economies, blockchain, industry 4.0, and the value that could be added through tethering physical and digital assets. This experience ultimately led Jaymes and I to found OurThings.

We both saw an opportunity in how Web2 companies might evolve. Many are beginning to move beyond solving strictly virtual problems by considering how their solutions can add real value to how people function in the world. These products are addressing the isolation and disengagement from our surroundings and communities that some platforms have contributed to. They are confronting the disconnect between the digital and physical world and the ways in which it might destabilize sectors like commercial real estate, manufacturing, and hospitality. If we hope to build on this positive work, it’s essential to integrate the digital with the physical, allowing them to inform and enhance one another. This approach can unlock the true value of assets by improving the performance of the built environment, driving material conservation, and preserving cultural memory.

These interests align with a cultural moment shaped by a heightened focus on celebrity culture, marked by an examination of wealth, societal continuity, and how we interact across divisions of class, boundaries, and lifestyles. The behavior of cultural figures—who capture our attention, influence our behavior, and exist at the center of social networks—show a desire to reclaim what it means to preserve and interrogate the future of the past in cultural and economic spheres. This ethos is driven by accountability and respect for a diverse range of traditions. These traditions highlight the infrastructure needed to build and maintain thriving communities. It also illuminates the necessity of embracing the interconnectedness of our material world across geographic and socioeconomic boundaries and using the digital-physical connection to improve efficiency and enhance value.

Celebrities, collectors, curators, designers, and artists have the capacity to illuminate a path to material accountability by directing attention to the materialization of wealth and setting standards of consumption. Through their lifestyles and relationships, they offer a vision for how we might live. Advancements in technology make it possible to share and enhance this lifestyle. It can preserve and build upon a material legacy that transcends illusion and fosters a community and connection among producers and consumers of culture. The platform we are building can achieve this vision by focusing on the community that stands to benefit most and that represents a clear market opportunity. Doing so will make it possible to develop a sustainable app, service, and physical-digital space brought to life by artificial intelligence and eventually virtual and augmented reality. This experience will build a community driven by our habits that have shaped our neighborhoods and cities for centuries. By mirroring how we actually live and socialize, this approach promises to be more sustainable and productive.

The path to achieving these ambitious goals begins with strategic investment in core AI technology and user interface development. Initially, we will focus on the luxury furniture market before expanding to home goods, a range of furniture price points, and other home-related goods and services. The interface will allow members to create personal style profiles, discover designers and brands, plan homes and projects, collaborate, and purchase items based on their style, budget, and timeline. Members will also be able to network, share homes, learn about significant homes and collections, manage their own collections, and pass on their legacy. While developing this interface, we will build a luxury furniture marketplace, leveraging a growing network of over 2,000 brands and 700 interior designers. We will invite the world’s leading collectors of homes and furniture as early members, followed by a broader set of significant homes and collections that are publicly accessible and that may inspire future projects. Finally, we will offer adjacent services that support one’s lifestyle through exclusive partnerships. With these components in place, we will expand the platform to the general public, creating an organization capable of sustained growth and meaningful impact. We hope you will join us on this journey.