43°33'N 7°01'E
Cannes, FR · 2025
Jason Nellis, smiling on a street in the south of France

About Jason Nellis

Performer who writes.
Builder who thinks.
Father who shows up.

The career came after the diagnosis. The diagnosis came at 19. Everything between then and now has been an argument against deferring the interesting life.

Near Cannes, France Father of Kit & Ace Northwestern '06 Builder since Hulu
01 · The longer story

Why behind
the career.

Official bio — written in third person for press and event use.

When Jason was 19, doctors told him he had Stage 2B Hodgkin's lymphoma. He was in college — Northwestern, Theatre major, the kind of kid who was more comfortable onstage than in a doctor's office. He went through chemo and radiation and still finished school. Then moved to Los Angeles instead of back to the East Coast, because the alternative was playing it safe, and playing it safe now had a specific cost he could actually feel.

"Someday" stopped being a safe assumption that year. It never really came back.

That urgency turned out to be a useful professional trait. He joined Hulu during its formative years — not with a plan, but with a pattern: find something worth building, figure out where the real leverage is, and make the thing nobody else is paying attention to yet. He co-founded Packagd, which Facebook acquired. He built Facebook Live Shopping inside Meta's NPE team, and became the company's first Founder in Residence. He signed on as Chief Product Officer at SuperBam and eventually ran the company as Interim CEO while it navigated a genuine crisis.

None of those moves followed a strategy document. They followed a gut sense for systems — which ones were ready to break open, which ones needed someone to care more carefully than the people already in charge. He's a high-context thinker who leads with narrative first, which occasionally confuses people who want a slide deck before they want to understand the problem, and works extraordinarily well with everyone else.

In April 2025, he moved his family to the south of France. Not a sabbatical. Not a midlife gesture. A deliberate restructuring of what a life looks like when you stop optimizing for someone else's definition of success — and start building something that doesn't require a negotiated exit to actually enjoy. He writes, advises, and builds from there. His two sons, Kit and Ace, are his best proof of concept.

02 · Career arc

Process
log.

Click an entry to expand

Joined during Hulu's formative years — not with a plan, but with a pattern: find something worth building, figure out where the real leverage is, and go after the thing nobody else is paying attention to yet. Learned the difference between a good idea and a shippable product, and came away with a permanent taste for building at scale.

StreamingProductScale
Read the case study →

Ran editorial product at PBS, then left to found a marketing agency. Sold it — and learned an important (and painful) lesson in the process: strategy is cheap, and execution risk is where companies actually die.

EditorialFounderLessons learned

Co-founded Packagd. Facebook acquired it in 2019, where the team first built Live Shopping for the Commerce group. After shifting to Meta's New Product Experimentation team, Jason led Super, a live streaming app, and eventually became the team's first Founder in Residence — a startup operator's seat inside a very large machine.

AcquisitionLive commerceNPE
Read the case study →

Signed on as Chief Product Officer, first for Jogg, then SuperBam, leading product across creator IP protection, content monetization, and AI deepfake enforcement. Stepped into SuperBam's Interim CEO seat in Q1 2026 to steer the company through a significant restructuring — the kind of role that tests a high-context, narrative-first operator.

Creator economyIP protectionLeadership
Read the case study →

Director of Innovation at BoltOS, opening the company up to new directions and opportunities. Building Akaeon Corp, a media and events company, alongside BoltOS.

AI strategyVenture buildingLive

"Strategy is cheap. Execution risk is where companies actually die."

03 · Right now

What's live
this quarter.

Work
BoltOS — Director of Innovation
Shaping the product and go-to-market strategy for the next iteration of AI-native operating infrastructure.

Focused on where AI creates real leverage inside enterprise systems — and where it mostly doesn't.

Venture
Akaeon Corp
Co-founded with Jenn. A media and events company, early stage.

Early days — the kind of work that's mostly invisible until it suddenly isn't.

Writing
Notes on things that don't fall over
Sporadic essays on leadership, product, and what a deliberate life actually looks like in practice.
Active