David S. Kidder

Apogee is a Human + AI performance system built for elite leadership teams navigating the most volatile operating environment in a generation. Strategy cycles can't keep pace with AI acceleration, global fragmentation, and continuous recalibration. Apogee installs a new operating system for how teams align, commit, and perform, turning volatility into velocity in 90 days. The core insight driving the work: great leadership alone no longer guarantees great performance. Performance in this reality demands a system, one that fuses peer accountability, identity-level commitment, and AI into a single disciplined rhythm. Teams move through a three-phase arc (Discover, Define, Drive) to surface the single highest-leverage shift, anchor a new commitment to it, and convert that commitment into operating behavior through structured sprints. The result is visible, measurable progress inside 90 days, and a permanent capability the team runs on its own. At the heart of the system is The Board Effect. In rotating peer Board Sessions, commitments are made in the open, and peers challenge, advise, and support with candor and care. It is this mechanism, not goal-setting and not planning, that drives follow-through beyond what any individual coaching model can match. Apogee is AI-supported, human-led. The platform pairs generative reflection, cross-team feedback, an Intentional Progress Model, and a leadership dashboard with expert facilitation, grounded in 20+ years of research in behavior change, decision science, and leadership development. It is guided by a world-class advisory board including Adam Grant, Esther Perel, Cassie Kozyrkov, Katy Milkman, Keith Ferrazzi, Andrew Yang, Bruce Feiler, Lisa Shalett, and Sanyin Siang, among others. Apogee exists to help elite teams turn the defining disruption of our time into their greatest source of advantage, and to build the resilience, clarity, and collective identity required to sustain it.

Whole-Human Growth System for Life Transitions | Build a Personal Board. Track identity-based goals. Achieve 95% follow-through on what matters most. Powered by the ApogeeOS Used by execs, founders, and leaders during life's most important moments.

I have given over 200+ inspring keynotes on enterprise Growth Mindset and Culture that focus on energizing, empowering and instrucing leaders and organizations to challenge their mindsets, systems and cultures in a respectful, but provactive brand of radical candor. The impact can be immediate and lasting, ultimately unlocking new competitiveness and desire to go on offense. As captured my lastest book, most enterprises are dominated by the "Big to Bigger" focus on re-risking and efficiency, New to Big organizations that adopt growth mindsets and systems are building resilient growth cultures prepared for the future. www.davidskidder.com www.newtobig.com

Alt Option Return is my early-stage investment funds that has directly invested in 100+ startups over the past 18 years (active investments below): https://www.davidskidder.com/investments/ https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/alt-option-return By Sector: Art and Creative Ventures • Art.sy • Author's Equity • HiFi Labs • Leroy Technologies Inc./Emissary • Plympton • Loft Orbital • We Tribute Consumer Products and Food • Abode Inc (Moved) • Clothia • Medida • Mouth Foods • Palate Club • Sandee Crypto and Blockchain • Multicoin Concentrated Fund • Multicoin Venture Fund • Core Scientific Digital Marketing and Business Software • BoostCTR • Bounce Exchange • Chili Piper • Long Term Stock Exchange (LTSE) • Plural.com • Safegraph • AI Media • TitleDock • Usable Machines Energy and Clean Tech • TAE Fusion Power • Arcadia Power • Jetti Resources • Valar Atomics • Pangaea Medical and Healthcare • BK Way Labs • Beam • Maxwell Health • Beckley Psytech • Gabbi • Hello Theraputics • Inner Cosmos • MAPS • Goa Theraputics • MycoMedica / Lycos • MAHHP • Pioneer Mind • Sheer Health • AllAboutWe • Tough Day • Vitalyze (Series A, B, C) Personal Finance and Fin Tech • M-KOPA • Fizz • Evertrak • Now Online • Happy Money • Wellthy Venture Capital Funds • C2V Capital Partners • Flex Capital Fund • Founders Fund • Gather Ventures • KittyHawk Ventures • Lower Carbon Capital • Torch Capital • Velvet Sea Ventures Wellness and Lifestyle • Perform Search • Banshoo • Circles • KidPass

Accenture Song acquired Bionic, where I served as Co-Founder and CEO and its proprietary growth offering, The GrowthOS (tm). With our incredible teams, we focused on integrating and scaling The GrowthOS generative AI platform and growth services across Accenture's global offerings. It was a great life experience and a proudly successful acquisition outcome.

www.NewToBig.com Adam Grant's "19 New Leadership Books to Read in 2019" "Once a big company makes the decision to grow, it has to learn how. New to Big presents a unique roadmap for big companies looking to spark powerful growth engines from within." –Clayton Christensen, Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School and bestselling author of The Innovator’s Dilemma and How Will You Measure Your Life? “Big companies are normally where creativity goes to die. But David Kidder has spent his impressive career proving that it doesn’t have to be that way. This is the long-awaited playbook for figuring out how to turn your bureaucracy into an innovation machine. Whether you’re down in the trenches or up in the C-suite, it’s full of smart ideas that are immediately actionable and immensely useful.” –Adam Grant, bestselling author of Originals and Give and Take Most established companies face a key survival challenge, says David Kidder, CEO of Bionic, lifelong entrepreneur, and angel investor in more than thirty startups: operational efficiency and outdated bureaucracy are at war with new growth. Legacy companies are skilled at growing big businesses into even bigger ones. But they are less adept at discovering new opportunities and turning them into big businesses, the way entrepreneurs and early-stage investors must. In New to Big, Kidder and Wallace reveal their proprietary blueprint for installing a permanent growth capability inside any company--the Growth Operating System. The Growth OS borrows the best tools, systems, and mind-sets from entrepreneurship and venture capital and adapts them for established organizations, leveraging these two distinct skills as a form of management for building in a future that is uncertain. By focusing on what consumers do rather than what they say, celebrating productive failure, embracing a portfolio approach, and learning from the outside-in.

I co-founded and served as CEO of Bionic, bootstrapped to over $28mm+ in annual revenue, which was acquired by Accenture Song in July 2021, and created the GrowthOS (tm), a proprietary solution designed to unlock new growth and competitiveness for the world's largest enterprises based on the models, methods, talent, and tools of venture capital and entrepreneurship. Now recognized as one of Accenture's most successful acquisitions in its history, The GrowthOS AI platform and services are now scaled globally as a core offering within Accenture Song's growth and innovation portfolio and are among the most successful acquisitions in its history. You can read more about The GrowthOS at www.NewToBig.com

The Startup Playbook (Published by Chronicle Books, January 2013) highlights 40 entrepreneurs and their individual “Playbooks” for building startup companies. Basically, a very raw and gritty overview of the beliefs and actions that have led these entrepreneurs to their outstanding success. The book profiles include the founders of SpaceX, Tesla (Elon Musk), Spanx (Sara Blakley), 800 Flowers (McCann), HonestTea (Goldman), Zappos (Tony Hsieh), LinkedIn (Reid Hoffman), Zip Car (Robin Chase), Flickr (Caterina Fake), The Motley Fool (Tom Gardner), Ben Horowitz (OpsWare), Steve Case (AOL), Steve Blank (Epiphany), Hosain Rahman (Jawbone), Chris Anderson (TED), Rodney Brooks (iRobot), Kevin Ryan (DoubleClick/Alley Corp), Jay Walker (Priceline), The Diamants (SkipHop), Scott Heifferman (Meetup), Marc Ecko (Ecko), Matt Blumberg (ReturnPath), Chris Dixon (Hunch), and many many others. The content and wisdom is profoundly raw.

Co-Founded in January 2007, Clickable was an all-in-one solution for online advertising. In one elegant experience, Clickable’s grew to 200+ dedicated team members who's goals it was to increase online investment performance by connecting and optimizing digital channels with the social graph. With Clickable’s patented and award-winning Pro advertising tool and dedicated search and social advertising experts, marketers radically reduced the time and complexity of managing multiple ad formats and networks, such as Google, Bing, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and more. Clickable was acquired by Syncapse in June 2012.