What does Adam Roozen do?

Adam Roozen builds technology systems and trades his own capital. He is CEO of Isotropic Solutions, which builds governed agent workforces for businesses, enterprises and national institutions. He also runs business automation experiments testing how much can operate without people, and takes a small number of advisory engagements each year.

What is Adam Roozen's background in trading?

Adam has traded his own capital for ten years, and it is his primary income. He started in forex around 2016, added crypto in 2018, and crypto became the main focus from 2021, with equities and index futures alongside it. He trades theses rather than tickers, and has built software around his own research process. He trades only his own capital. He does not manage outside money, is not a financial adviser or fund manager, and publishes no performance figures.

What is Adam Roozen's background in digital technology?

Adam has worked through every consumer technology wave since the mid-nineties. He built transactional websites in high school, before payment processors existed, and had to write his own card encryption. He joined Walmart as a programmer analyst during the early dot-com build-out, ran e-commerce marketing at Sam's Club through the mobile wave, scaled a global commerce agency through the social and cloud waves, worked in tokenized and blockchain systems, and now builds autonomous agent systems.

What is Isotropic Solutions?

Isotropic Solutions was founded by Seran Devaraj, and Adam Roozen joined afterward as CEO. The company builds governed agent workforces: agents do operational work, a person signs off, and every decision keeps its evidence. Autonomy is earned a rung at a time, from drafting, to recommending, to acting under review, to running inside written limits. The second half of the work is preparing businesses to be read and transacted with by other companies' AI systems.

How is Adam different from a traditional technology consultant?

Adam runs the systems he would otherwise be advising about. Two of his companies operate with no employees, his trading runs on software he wrote, and Isotropic Solutions ships agent systems into banks and commodity traders. He has also spent nearly 30 years operating: building early e-commerce at Walmart, running e-commerce marketing for a $700M to $1B channel at Sam's Club, and co-founding a 200-person agency.

What is Adam Roozen's background in e-commerce?

Adam led e-commerce marketing and operations at Sam's Club (Walmart) while the channel grew from $700M to $1B in annual revenue. He then co-founded Echidna and scaled it to more than 200 people, serving blue-chip retailers including Kohl's, Michael Kors, Toys 'r Us, Lowe's, Cracker Barrel, Aveda, Jelly Belly, Wolters Kluwer, Dubai Duty Free, Liverpool in Mexico and Mr. Price in South Africa.

Who does Adam work with?

The work spans four sizes. One person, in the zero-employee companies he runs himself. Owner-operated businesses between $5M and $50M, through W3 Strategic Management Services. Enterprises, such as ETG, a global agricultural commodity trader turning over $8B across 250 business units. And national institutions, including the Central Bank of Oman and Vietnam International Bank.

How do I start working with Adam?

Adam takes a small number of advisory engagements each year, and works directly with whoever is accountable rather than through a team of associates. When an owner-operator needs the cash more than he needs the invoice, he will take revenue share instead of a fee. The best first step is a short note through the contact page describing what you are up against.

Framework Part 3: Set and Setting

I create business improvements by finding, studying and implementing effective web3 patterns.

The right mindset in the right setting is powerful.

Our web3 Set and Setting

Set

My set is that of an observer, a learner and a doer. From a foundation of equanimity, we are surveying the web3 landscape and interrogating it when appropriate. Most of the audience lives, or used to live, in a different industry and has found some interest in web3. Given the broad and nascent nature of web3, it’s not surprising that most people feel there’s too much to track. Furthermore, reading news articles at random gives a sense of overwhelm.

Setting

The setting is the ocean between established commerce businesses and the future of web3.

The setting is a thriving growth environment for rapid innovation across all aspects of commerce. It’s difficult to imagine a place, person or thing that won’t come into contact with web3 eventually. In such a dynamic, broad and nascent ecosystem, there’s bound to be a plethora of experiments, companies, celebrities, perspectives, investments, successes and failures. It’s going to be choppy seas for a long time. A decade – or two. Though successes are already emerging.

Wrap-up

Early explorers will brave the expansive ocean between their current business and web3. Each business will embark on its own time. Some will speed ahead while others wait for others to chart the way.

It’s my intention to help as many as I’m able, regardless of when they decide its their time.

This wraps up my three-part web3 commerce framework. You have an idea how I view the future and how I plan to explore it.

By sharing my experiences, I endeavor to utilize this framework and provide:

an enduring horizon to move towards

a stabilizing filter to interpret what I see

and a consistent set and setting to help us navigate towards web3.

Welcome aboard.

Originally published August 21, 2022 on physis.digital. View the archived copy.