About me

I live in Roswell, Georgia, just north of Atlanta. I'm currently taking a break and exploring what I want to build next. Most recently, I co-founded and scaled Macro Oceans, a company that makes high-performance biomaterials from kelp. I led the launch of our first products and signed up our first customers.

With my extra time, I’m tinkering on Recap, a side project supported by an Emergent Ventures grant that uses AI to summarize local government meetings.

One of the things that makes me unique is that I've lived a lot of lives on the way to this one. I've worked in non-profits, Big 3 consulting, and product management at YouTube and Stripe. I've also lived in Pittsburgh, North Carolina, San Francisco, and Switzerland. Perhaps because of this, I'm a passionate believer in the ability of generalists to solve problems in ambiguous environments.

• Building things that matter. "The world is a museum of passion projects." We have incredible power to shape our future. Courage and tenacity are required for the job.
• Trust. An invisible power that allows people, teams, and societies to flourish.
• Ecosystems and communities. My friend Alex has created (or revealed?) in me an obsession with how ecosystems catalyze, grow, and sustain themselves.

• Novel materials and the ecosystems required to bring them to market. I love a great "how [material x] became ubiquitous" story. Send those my way!
• How to use LLMs / AI to do great work. For the first time since the internet, the tools available for doing great work are changing, opening up new possibilities. Let's harness them for good!

If you have thoughts about these or just think we'd have a good conversation, put some time on my calendar or send me an email: hello@jdilla.xyz. One of the main reasons I keep this site is to inspire some serendipity.

Past Products and Projects

• Macro Oceans: Co-founded the company and led launch and early commercialization of seaweed-based biomaterials.
• Stripe Apps Ecosystem: Launching and scaling the app ecosystem for Stripe users worldwide.
• YouTube Search and Creator Studio: Lots of different features for Creators of all types and sizes. By far the most fun product I've ever worked on. My product portfolio has specifics.
• Space Fox: A simple app for YouTube creators who want to collaborate with an editor securely. A side project with a dear friend.
• NextRoll (née AdRoll): Product lead for the social integrations and video.
• Climate Corporation: Product manager for Weather and Scouting Features for Climate Fieldview
• GoodBrackets: A failed attempt to create a March Madness for Charity tournament
• Nourish: A student movement for social entrepreneurship. I scaled the organization from a regional one to a national one. Sadly, after 19 years, the organization is no longer active.