Who the duck is
James Nichols?

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

I like figuring out how a business works and helping the people in it make it work better.

At Small Improvements, an HR software company, I was employee nine. I owned inbound sales, onboarding, training and rollout. During my four years there, the company grew from fewer than 100 to 650+ paying customers and from under $1 million to $7 million in annual recurring revenue. Those are company growth figures over my tenure, not results attributable to one person.

I co-founded and ran US Park Pass with a small team, reaching $8 million in annual sales at peak and shipping 500,000+ orders over the life of the business. I built the systems behind the marketing, storefront, fulfillment and shipping, including a 450,000-person email program contributing 25% of revenue.

I built this for my September 2026 application to MotherDuck’s Growth Marketer role. I wanted to show you how I think, what I can build with a team of agents, and whether you’d enjoy working with me. Naturally, there’s a dragon.

The Bad Mother Duckers

Get Reed End's lamps lit, then keep them lit.

Reed End has been dark for three nights. The Guild that sold it lamp oil is broke, blocked, and blaming a dragon.

Choose a duck, work the case, then fly the route. Every accepted choice is saved.

About ten minutes · saved as you play

The Knight, Wizard and Ranger set out together toward the Guild hall.

Talk to James about the role, an idea, or the ducks.

Let’s get quackin’

Leave your name and email, and I’ll get back to you soon. A little context is welcome, too.

Your contact details

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The form is unavailable right now. You can email me directly below.

Prefer email? james@jamesdnichols.com. Or call or text if easier: (571) 205-8958.

A fictional adventure by James D. Nichols.

How did this become
a duck adventure?

I started by trying to explain how I’d approach growth at MotherDuck. The page got very good at explaining itself. It needed to be more fun to use.

A game gave us a reason to explore the platform. SQL turned records into clues, and Python gave choices consequences. We ran those rules in MotherDuck Flights to explore different outcomes. MCP lets you continue the same adventure with your agent.

I shaped the world and the direction, then worked with Claude Code and Codex across writing, illustration, data and development. The best part was getting those disciplines to tell the same story.

  1. The Wizard examines a discovery.

    Start with the numbers.

    A growth demo with evidence, experiments and rather a lot of explanation.

    Useful. But would you remember me?

  2. The Knight makes an invitation.

    Find a reason to return.

    Trying the onboarding sparked an email idea: help a new user take a meaningful next step.

    What if that next step continued an adventure?

  3. The Knight, Wizard and Duckagon gather around an open book.

    Give the question a world.

    A missing Margin. Three investigators. A dragon with a surprisingly reasonable complaint.

    Now the decisions have someone depending on them.

  4. The Wizard hands the next piece of the work to the Ranger.

    Get the crew building.

    Story, art, Python, SQL and a playable interface. Give each agent a clear part; bring the pieces back together.

    Play it. Spot the “huh?” Fix it. Try again.

Botched rolls: the good ideas, the detours, the ducks.

Browse the scripts, sketches, prompts, queries and code that got us here. The earlier ideas are part of the story, too.

The Knight and Wizard mourn a theatrically fallen Ranger while the Duckagon celebrates.
*no rangers were harmed in the making of this demo.