Neal O'Grady 🍉

Demand Curve | 93,000 founders get 3 startup growth tactics in their inbox each week. Join the Growth Newsletter below.

I have an extremely strange mix of skills/experience:

- Mechanical engineer
- Full-stack developer
- Serial entrepreneur ($25M+ in total revenue)
- Content creator/marketer (100k+ newsletter subs and millions of page views)
- Growth marketer (ran marketing companies for 9 years)
- Crypto nerd (20k+ defi transactions)

Which is why I run marketing at a scrappy and highly technical crypto company—I can do a bit of everything.

Co-Founder

Demand Curve (YC S19) creates courses, content, and events to teach founders and marketers how to grow companies. Our weekly newsletter goes out to over 60,000 founders and marketers.

New job title just dropped

In 2026, you can:

- Bet on how many tweets Elon posts this month
- Bet on whether Jesus Christ will return in 2026
- Bet on which country the US strikes next

It's honestly a bit absurd 😅 

With memecoins, you can bet on the cultural relevance of ideas and moments.

And now with Zora, you can mint a token on anything you think will trend — a tweet, a news event, a vibe — and turn it into a market.

Yes, even the topic of the day on LinkedIn.

We've been talking for a while about the Attention Economy and how creators like Mr. Beast have learned to capitalize on it, but now we, the social media-addicted consumers, can capitalize on it as well.

So, although this job post is a joke, trading culturally relevant content is already how some people earn their living.

To you, this may be a dystopian future, but sports betting is surging among Gen Z. 

$1.3B was transacted on prediction markets during the Super Bowl alone.

The appetite to put money where your opinion is isn't going away — it's expanding into every corner of culture.

Whether you think that's exciting or terrifying, the infrastructure is being built right now. Which is why Codex Data Inc is excited to power Zora's token data.

"Attention Economist" might be a joke today. But what else are we going to do when AGI comes? 😅

Neal O'Grady

Head of Marketing at Codex.io & Defined.fi

Dennis Geelen

Business Coach | Keynote Speaker | Author of The Happy Accidents newsletter and The Accidental Solopreneur book

I’ve spent most of my career helping people navigate change.

Sometimes that meant working with leadership teams and organizations.
Sometimes it meant coaching solopreneurs who were building something new after an unexpected turn.
And more recently, it’s meant telling true stories that remind us how unpredictable, strange, and meaningful real life can be.

At the core of everything I do is one idea:
people don’t change because of frameworks alone, they change because of perspective.

What I Do

I’m a speaker, author, and consultant who helps individuals and organizations make sense of uncertainty, transition, and unexpected opportunity.

My work focuses on:
 • Leadership and change
 • Human-centered decision making
 • Serendipity, timing, and “happy accidents”
 • Stories that challenge neat narratives about success and control

I’m currently building The Uncanny, a storytelling project exploring true stories that sound impossible but actually happened.

Who I Work With
 • Event organizers looking for keynote talks that are thoughtful, grounded, and story-driven
 • Organizations and nonprofits navigating change, leadership transitions, or cultural shifts
 • Individuals who want practical clarity through focused, one-hour coaching conversations

(I’m no longer actively promoting large programs or long-term coaching, but I still take on select conversations and workshops when there’s a strong fit.)

What I’ve Created
 • Author of The Zero In Formula and The Accidental Solopreneur
 • Host and creator of story-driven newsletters, podcasts, and short-form video content
 • Speaker on topics including change, leadership, serendipity, and starting before you feel ready

Want to Connect?

If you’re reaching out about:
 • Speaking engagements
 • A focused workshop or session
 • A thoughtful one-on-one coaching conversation

Feel free to DM me.

And if you’re someone who loves true stories that make you pause and say, “That can’t be real”…
you’ll probably enjoy what I’m building next.

Founder

Coaching and mentoring to help you start and scale your one-person business.

If you are a relatively good employee you can probably relate to this

You get your work done ahead of schedule, that should be a good thing right?
But no, now you have to pretend to be busy.
And it's stressful.

Because if you are seen sitting at your desk and you don't appear to be busy then you are immediately labeled as lazy or unproductive.

This is a real problem and I bet many of you have felt it.

Am I right?

Speaker | Author | Consultant - Guiding organizations through leadership transitions and complexity

"Oh, I was a bit rude to the cashier today but it was because I had a terrible morning and was late for a meeting, I'm not normally like that."

2 days later... 

"I can't believe how rude that person was to the waiter in the restaurant today."

We live in 2 different moral systems.

Most leadership training gets this backwards.

We teach people how to manage others…
before they know how to manage themselves.

And then we wonder why teams struggle.

There’re some uncomfortable truths we don’t like to acknowledge when it comes to leadership: 

- If you can’t manage your own reactions,
you can’t manage conflict.

- If you don’t understand your own personality, you’ll misread everyone else’s.

- If you don’t take responsibility for your results, you’ll blame your team.

- If you can’t prioritize your own time,
you’ll create chaos for everyone around you.

Contrary to what we like to think, leadership doesn’t start with strategy. 

It starts with self-awareness.

In my 12-week leadership coaching program through Zero In, the first four weeks are entirely about leading yourself.

It’s the foundation for everything that comes afterwards (where we then focus on leading individuals and then leading teams).

In those first four weeks, we dig into personality, stress triggers,
how others actually experience you,
how you respond under pressure,
and how you prioritize what matters.

Because once you can lead yourself…
leading others becomes exponentially easier.

If you’re serious about becoming the kind of leader people actually want to follow,
start there.

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Some of the most damaging leaders I’ve seen weren’t incompetent.

They were unregulated.

Don’t get me wrong, they were smart,  strategic, and experienced.

But they couldn’t manage themselves.

They couldn’t control their reactions in tense moments.

They took feedback personally.

They blamed circumstances when results slipped.

They said “yes” to everything and then created chaos trying to deliver.

And their teams paid the price.

Leadership isn’t just about vision or communication.

It’s about emotional control.
Self-awareness.
Responsibility.
Discipline with your time and energy.

If you can’t lead your own habits, emotions, and priorities, you end up outsourcing the consequences to everyone around you.

And that’s when trust erodes.

Have you ever worked for a leader who struggled to lead themselves?

What did that look like and how did it affect the team?

Not to self: do more videos on LinkedIn 

This one just doesn’t want to slow down
Almost 750K views (so far).

Are you doing videos here?

graphical user interface, application, website

Is it your goals?
Is it your habits?
Is it your purpose?

Or is it actually none of those things?

taplio

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Dennis Geelen

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taplio

The Battle

Neal O'Grady 🍉

Dennis Geelen

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Neal O'Grady 🍉's LinkedIn Performance

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