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James D. Nichols

James
Nichols

James Nichols
Builder. Operator. Always learning.New York City metro

I turn business and customer problems into working systems.

I co-founded and ran US Park Pass, owned customer rollouts at Small Improvements, and now build with AI coding agents. I connect the customer conversation, the business decision and the systems that put it into practice.

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Open to full-time and fractional roles

OperationsMarketing & growthProductAI solutions

Built it.
Ran it.
Learned.

From online games to B2B software to a business I built from my living room.

See what I’m building now

US Park Pass

Co-founder & COO

2018–2026

Built the business. Built the systems behind it.

I started shipping orders from my living room and built the operation through storefront, marketing, fulfillment and customer support. At peak, we reached $8 million in annual sales on Shopify Plus, with no developers on staff.

500,000+ orders over the life of the business. A 450,000-person email program driving 25% of revenue.

We wound the business down after a 2026 federal policy change ended the reseller model.

More about this work

I also built a daily feed of per-order profit into Google Ads bidding. A later reconstruction exposed costs the first version missed. That experience taught me to keep following the numbers back to the business.

Read the margin-system case study

Small Improvements

Customer Success, Sales & Marketing

2014–2018

Helped customers succeed. Helped the company grow.

I owned inbound sales, onboarding, training and rollout for B2B software customers, including teams at Pinterest, Dropbox, Reddit, Spotify, Planet Labs and AdRoll. Internally, I implemented HubSpot and Aha! and trained the team to use them.

During my tenure: fewer than 100 to 650+ paying customers; under $1 million to $7 million in annual recurring revenue.

These are company growth figures over my tenure, not results attributable to one person.

More about this work

I turned informal education into a structured video-training program and made the case for dedicated marketing and product-management hires.

Community & Marketing Management

Trion · Mythic / EA · Sigil

2006–2013

Brought the people making the product closer to the people using it.

I ran testing communities, launch communications and live events for online games including Rift, Warhammer Online and Vanguard. The job connected players, developers, marketing and live operations.

Developer livestreams, alpha and beta programs, and product demos at E3, PAX and San Diego Comic-Con.

More about this work

It was an early education in listening at scale, explaining a changing product and helping teams act on what customers were telling them.

Full career history, including earlier work

Independent Builder & Operator · Independent

2026 – present

Define business problems, direct AI coding agents and test the results. Work includes a voice receptionist with a verified acceptance call, margin tools, the fictional Duck Yeah demo and b.akery’s coordination alpha in development.

Co-founder & COO · US Park Pass

2018 – 2026 · Bridgeport, CT

Co-founded and ran the storefront, fulfillment, marketing and customer support, with no developers on staff. Owned paid acquisition, lifecycle email and operating systems. We wound down after a 2026 federal policy change ended the reseller model.

Customer Success, Sales & Marketing · Small Improvements

2014 – 2018 · Berlin (remote)

Owned inbound sales, onboarding, training and rollout for customers including Pinterest, Dropbox, Reddit and Spotify. Implemented HubSpot and Aha!, trained colleagues and built a video-training program. Figures describe company growth during my tenure.

Community & Marketing Management

Trion Worlds

Feb 2011 – Aug 2013

Launch community manager for Rift; started one of the first in-studio developer livestreams; ran ArcheAge's pre-launch community.

Mythic Entertainment (EA / BioWare)

2007 – 2011

Ran the alpha and beta programs and convention demos for Warhammer Online, and wrote the Executive Producer's Letters.

Sigil Games Online

May 2006 – May 2007

Ran the beta community and worldwide launch of Vanguard: Saga of Heroes, and stayed through the studio's close.

Project Coordinator · 500 Group Inc.

Jan 2005 – Feb 2006

Project coordinator and executive assistant to Paolo Tiramani, on the folding home system that became Boxabl.

Curiosity,
put to work.

AI has changed how much I can build. These projects show how I think, direct the work and keep learning.

The Ranger, Knight and Wizard ducks flee a fire-breathing dragon.

Duck Yeah

A business problem you can play through.

Explore Duck Yeah

An illustrated adventure built for my MotherDuck application. Follow a decision through its consequences, inspect the records, and see how the project changed as I challenged what was useful.

I shaped the problem, story and experience. Claude Code and Codex implemented the code and queries under my direction.

The business and its outcomes are fictional. The application is a working demonstration.

b.akery

Helping people and AI agents keep work moving.

I’m developing b.akery to carry decisions, context and corrections across people, projects and AI tools, so an operator doesn’t have to keep the whole business in their head.

The first alpha is focused on Codex and Claude. My own projects are the starting point for learning where shared context helps and where it gets in the way.

Early alpha in development. Its usefulness in other people’s work is still to be established.

Explore b.akery

Voice receptionist

From a service flow to a real call.

Built a voice-AI receptionist and a consent-based callback demo. A July 2026 acceptance call verified the end-to-end experience.

I directed the integration and tested the caller experience. AI agents implemented the code.

Read the implementation note

The acceptance check confirmed that an explicitly requested call reached the phone, disclosed AI and recording, and did not place a second call on immediate resubmission. The site no longer offers the callback form.

Historical implementation example. The callback form is no longer on this site; recordings and caller details stay private.

Follow the margin.

A decision is only as good as its inputs.

At US Park Pass, a margin system became a lesson in checking the system itself.

Read the profit-bidding case study
The problem

Revenue-based bidding treated very different orders as equally valuable. I wanted advertising decisions to reflect what we actually kept.

The implementation

I built a daily per-order profit feed for Google Ads, first with Sheets and Apps Script, then rebuilt on BigQuery and Google Cloud with AI assistance.

The finding

A later reconstruction of 80,268 orders from February–December 2025 found 3,032 orders losing money after full costs. It exposed costs the earlier feed had missed.

The limit

The rebuilt pipeline ran during wind-down. There is no clean before-and-after performance result to claim.

Analysis of 80,268 orders, February to December 2025. Historical findings, not a claim of improved campaign performance.

Useful across
the business.

My work often starts where teams and systems meet. I can understand the problem with you, shape a solution, and see it through.

Business ownership: make the business run better.

Connect the storefront, fulfillment, support and economics. Keep responsibility for the operation after the launch.

At US Park Pass: storefront, fulfillment, shipping, support and the economics behind each order.

Growth & customer systems: connect attention to customer value.

Carry the customer journey from acquisition and sales through onboarding, education and retention.

At Small Improvements: customer adoption and growth. At US Park Pass: paid acquisition and a 450,000-person email program.

Product & customer feedback: turn the problem into something useful.

Turn customer and community feedback into priorities, clearer communication and a better rollout.

From software onboarding and game launches to today’s working AI projects.

AI-assisted implementation: take it from idea to implementation.

Define the problem, direct coding agents, test the result and own the decision to ship, revise or stop.

A voice receptionist, margin tools and Duck Yeah. The implementation and the limits are part of the story.

The work first.
Then the tools.

Commerce, customer systems, data and software. What I’ve used, and where.

Tool depth varies. I own problem definition, solution design and delivery decisions. AI agents write much of the code. I can read and modify SQL; I’m still learning to write it from scratch.

Commerce & acquisition

Running a store, paid acquisition, lifecycle marketing and social publishing.

  • Shopify Plus
  • Google Ads
  • Meta Ads
  • Klaviyo
  • Buffer
  • Triple Whale
  • Report Pundit

Customer, product & team systems

Sales, onboarding, customer education, product planning and team collaboration.

  • HubSpot
  • Close
  • Aha!
  • Jira
  • Trello
  • Notion

Data & business decisions

Connecting order economics, inventory and fulfillment to business decisions.

  • Google Sheets
  • Apps Script
  • BigQuery
  • Google Cloud
  • QuickBooks
  • ShipStation
  • Sage Inventory Planner

Software & AI-assisted delivery

Directing coding agents and assembling working applications.

  • Claude Code
  • Codex
  • Cursor
  • GitHub
  • Cloudflare Workers
  • Astro
  • Retell AI

Current project exploration

Tools I’m exploring through current projects, including Duck Yeah.

  • Jev
  • MotherDuck
  • DuckDB
  • SQL
  • Python
  • TypeScript
  • MCP

Always
learning.
Ready for
what’s next.

A builder looking for his next grand challenge.

I’m open to full-time and fractional roles where I can learn the business, own a meaningful problem and stay with it through implementation. Operations, growth, product and AI solutions are all ways into that work.

I like curious people, unfamiliar problems and the moment an idea becomes something useful. I want to help a team explore what AI makes possible, with responsibility for how it works for customers.