# Adam Hofmann Adam Hofmann helps people and organizations navigate technology transitions that change what it means to be human. His current focus is AI: going early, trying things before they're obvious, and translating what he finds into something leaders, companies and individuals can act on. ## At a glance - **Role:** Partner at Elixirr, the global consulting firm, where he leads AI transformation for large organizations. - **Experience:** 15+ years at the intersection of AI and business. A serial entrepreneur. - **Founder:** Co-founded Responsum, an enterprise AI company, in 2020. Elixirr acquired it in September 2023. - **Writing:** PSBL ("Possible"), his newsletter on what he's seeing at the frontier, what he's experimenting with, and where he thinks we're heading. He also writes Elixirr's monthly executive briefing on AI. - **Speaking:** Keynotes and leadership sessions on AI and how organizations, teams and people change with it. - **Based in:** Seattle. ## What he's known for Seeing patterns early, testing them hands-on, and making them concrete. Clients describe the value as a perspective they hadn't heard before, communicated clearly enough to decide what to do next. His career has repeatedly put him near the start of a technology shift: digital photography in high school, the mobile marketplace wave in San Francisco, early chatbots, deep tech at Singularity University, and enterprise AI that could act on what a company knows before the term "agentic" was common. ## Point of view When trying something new becomes nearly free, progress is limited by what we choose to try and how fast we learn from it. AI has real downside and, in his view, far more upside. The opportunity is to use it to tap into our own human strengths at a scale we've never had. ## Ways to work with him - **Keynotes:** for rooms that need to see what's happening, where it's going, and what to do about it. - **Leadership sessions:** finding the big bets with a leadership team and prototyping the future so people can see it. - **Transformation:** with large organizations, through Elixirr. - **Founders:** advising founders building what's next. ## The long way round His story, as told on adamhofmann.com/about/, one waypoint at a time. ### Growing up: I saw the world a little differently If something was a pain, I tried to do something about it. I built Lego and Erector set machines to haul laundry up the chute and fish balls out of the pool, wrote BASIC to get a turtle through a maze, and strapped on suction cups and plungers to see if I could walk up a wall. When I wasn't building, my brother and I were off in the woods, working out how the world worked. Lesson: If something's broken, don't wait for someone else to fix it. Try something. ### Early on: Then people started paying me I'd do the things I was curious about, and people would ask if they could pay me for them. A lawn care business. A photography business. Selling Pokémon cards on eBay when eBay was brand new. I didn't have a word for it yet. Lesson: Follow what you're curious about, and the world finds a way to pay for it. ### High school: My first technology transition My mom pushed me into black-and-white photography because she thought I'd like it. I picked it up fast, invented my own techniques, won some awards, got invited to the White House Press Corps summer program, and got my hands on the school's first digital cameras. Plenty of photographers called digital cheating. I saw a whole new way to do the thing I loved. Lesson: Every technology shift brings fear and possibility at the same time. I've always gone toward the possibility. ### College: The detour was the path I went to Texas for the advertising program and the business school, because I wanted to make money from being creative. It was my first time in Austin. Then life pulled me back to KU, where I got plugged into entrepreneurship, helped stand up the program, and met the mentors who opened my eyes. Lesson: The detours keep turning out to be the path. ### 2010: Deloitte I met a couple of people from Deloitte at a job fair, told them what I was about, and they said I should come work there. The pay was good, so I went. I kept finding faster ways to get my work done, and then didn't have enough interesting work to fill the day. (I got very good at online games.) Lesson: I need hard, new problems. Without them, I go looking. ### 2010: The Kauffman Foundation Then a mentor from college called out of the blue and told me to quit and come to the Kauffman Foundation. Suddenly I was surrounded by entrepreneurs, Startup Weekend and the people funding them, spending time in Silicon Valley and meeting people like Naval Ravikant. Lesson: When the right person calls, say yes, even if it means walking away from the safe thing. ### 2011: Zaarly My mentor pitched Zaarly at Startup Weekend and it took off. Next thing I knew, I was at Ashton Kutcher's house pitching our growth strategy, we'd raised $20 million from Kleiner Perkins, and I was opening offices and building teams for a kind of marketplace nobody had built before. I was also an immature manager who thought he knew everything, and I ran myself into the ground. Lesson: Being right about the future doesn't help if you break yourself getting there. ### 2014: Assist, and the first chatbots I tried to rebuild by jumping straight into more startups. At Assist we started with peer-to-peer travel recommendations, then tried using chatbots to mimic humans. Our first experiment used Slackbot keyword triggers and the Domino's API to order a pizza from a chat message. The idea was early. I wasn't ready. Lesson: The idea can be right and I can still need rebuilding. I had to take care of me first. ### 2015: Singularity University Lots of startups, no famous names, and overqualified for everything I applied for. Singularity University almost didn't hire me as a product marketer. I ended up leading marketing, brand and events, working with large organizations and their executives on seeing where things are going, and on how hard it is to bring that back inside. Lesson: Seeing the future is the easy part. Getting an organization to move toward it is the work. ### Along the way: Cori I met Cori at the start of my time at Singularity University. We both knew San Francisco wasn't home, and it came down to Austin or Seattle. I took her to Austin for her first time to try to convince her, and it worked. Without that, I'd never have met Steve. Lesson: Trust the pull, even when you can't explain it. ### 2020: Responsum I'd spent years trying to get chatbots to do smart things. Then Steve told me what his team was building, and that it actually worked, and everything clicked. We built AI that could reach everything a company knows and act on it, through a lot of twists and turns, until Elixirr acquired us in September 2023. Lesson: Conviction about the future only matters if you can get people to act on it. ### 2021: The Mandate While we were building Responsum, The Mandate emerged: conversations with men about masculinity, their mental and emotional health, and what it takes to hold space for that. Lesson: Saying the hard thing first gives everyone else permission. ### 2024: The Adam Experiment A newsletter and podcast about integration, and my belief that success comes from being your true self and working on what lights you up. I explored with different people what that looked like for them, and doubled down on who I am. Lesson: Success comes from leaning into who you actually are, not away from it. ### Now: Partner at Elixirr After the acquisition I became a Partner at Elixirr, leading AI transformation, and in 2023 we moved to Seattle. It's where I get to bring all of this together for clients: seeing where things are going, placing bets, and getting technology adopted by real people inside real organizations. Lesson: Nothing I learned along the way was wasted. ### 2026: PSBL I wanted space to explore this future out loud, and to share the stories I've mostly kept to myself. This moment has real downside, and I think far more upside. PSBL is where we work out how to navigate it together. Lesson: AI can help us tap into our own superpowers at a scale we've never had. That's the possibility. ## Earlier work - [The Mandate](https://adamhofmann.com/mandate/) (Interview series, 2021): A season of conversations with men about their mental and emotional health. Burnout, depression, addiction, sexuality, panic attacks, fatherhood, intimacy, mid-life. Recorded in 2021, when almost nobody was saying this out loud on camera. - [The Adam Experiment](https://adamhofmann.com/adam-experiment/) (Newsletter and podcast, 2024): Written in public over a few months, starting on my birthday. Compartmentalization and integration, the physics of focus, power and masculinity, how to get unstuck, and a run of guest conversations. ## Links - [Website](https://adamhofmann.com/) - [About (full profile)](https://adamhofmann.com/about.md) - [PSBL](https://psbl.adamhofmann.com) - [Elixirr monthly AI briefing](https://www.elixirr.com/en-us/ai-insights/) - [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/adhofmann/) - [Elixirr](https://www.elixirr.com) - [Email](mailto:hello@adamhofmann.com)