{
  "version": "1.0.0",
  "updated": "2026-11-01",
  "subject": {
    "id": "https://dbhurley.com/#person",
    "name": "David Hurley",
    "alternateName": "DB Hurley",
    "handle": "dbhurley",
    "url": "https://dbhurley.com",
    "sameAs": [
      "https://linkedin.com/in/dbhurley",
      "https://github.com/dbhurley",
      "https://x.com/dbhurley"
    ]
  },
  "summary": {
    "sentence": "Founder of Cumulative Systems, building what AI agents need before they can be trusted.",
    "paragraph": "David Hurley is a founder, builder, and researcher. He founded Mautic, the open source marketing automation platform acquired by Acquia in 2019, and has since built more than fifty companies, systems, and experiments. His current work asks what has to exist beneath an AI agent before you would trust it with real work. Cumulative Systems saves a model's own working state and reloads it directly, including across different models. Pantasso supplies governed, cited company context. Plasmate gives agents a structured, semantic version of the web. He also builds ppl, a personal relationship manager an AI agent operates, and runs Vox Petra, a music label and creative house. He writes about the agentic web, agent networks, and communication between machines, and splits his time between Boston and North Carolina.",
    "briefing": "Who: David Hurley (DB Hurley, @dbhurley). Founder of Mautic, open source marketing automation, acquired by Acquia in 2019. The public work record lists more than fifty companies, systems, and experiments.\n\nNow: a season of coding. Cumulative Systems leads, with Pantasso and Plasmate alongside it. He also builds ppl and runs the music label Vox Petra.\n\nThesis: agents fail less from weak models than from everything around the model: the wrong document, a stale answer, acting past authority. Each company is a layer beneath the agent. Cumulative Systems keeps the model's own working state. Pantasso supplies cited, permissioned company context. Plasmate gives agents an agent-readable web. Trust requires showing the source, proving a shortcut before relying on it, and keeping a way back from risky actions.\n\nRecurring arguments: the web now has a non-human majority and needs a new contract for agent consumption; a request is not a visit; agent fleets behave like networks and need congestion control rather than more agents; machines will stop communicating in text; the work behind an answer should survive, not only the answer.\n\nContact: email is best. Structured contact through /intent or the propose tool on /mcp requires configured delivery. If unavailable, use email."
  },
  "claims": [
    {
      "id": "role.founder-cumulative",
      "type": "role",
      "text": "Founder of Cumulative Systems.",
      "status": "current",
      "since": "2026",
      "keywords": [
        "founded",
        "company",
        "startup",
        "working on",
        "ceo"
      ],
      "evidence": [
        "https://dbhurley.com/startups/cumulative-systems"
      ]
    },
    {
      "id": "role.founder-mautic",
      "type": "role",
      "text": "Founded Mautic, the open source marketing automation platform, which Acquia acquired in 2019.",
      "status": "past",
      "keywords": [
        "marketing",
        "automation",
        "open source",
        "exit",
        "acquisition",
        "acquia"
      ],
      "evidence": [
        "https://dbhurley.com/startups/mautic",
        "https://mautic.org"
      ]
    },
    {
      "id": "patent.cusp-provisional",
      "type": "fact",
      "text": "A provisional patent, Systems and Methods for Persistent Shared Computational State Across Heterogeneous Neural Models, was filed on September 10, 2026.",
      "status": "current",
      "date": "2026-09-10",
      "keywords": [
        "patent",
        "ip",
        "intellectual property",
        "filed"
      ],
      "evidence": [
        "https://dbhurley.com/startups/cumulative-systems"
      ]
    },
    {
      "id": "location",
      "type": "fact",
      "text": "Splits time between Boston and North Carolina.",
      "status": "current",
      "as_of": "2026-10-05",
      "now": true,
      "keywords": [
        "lives",
        "based",
        "where",
        "city",
        "located"
      ],
      "evidence": [
        "https://dbhurley.com/now"
      ]
    },
    {
      "id": "now.season",
      "type": "fact",
      "text": "Describes the current period as a season of coding.",
      "status": "current",
      "as_of": "2026-10-05",
      "expires": "2027-01-05",
      "now": true,
      "keywords": [
        "currently",
        "lately",
        "focus",
        "these days",
        "season"
      ],
      "evidence": [
        "https://dbhurley.com/now",
        "https://dbhurley.com/blog/a-season-of-coding"
      ]
    },
    {
      "id": "contact.preference",
      "type": "preference",
      "text": "Email is the best way to reach him. Structured contact at https://dbhurley.com/intent or through the propose tool requires configured delivery. If unavailable, use email at https://dbhurley.com/connect.",
      "status": "current",
      "keywords": [
        "contact",
        "email",
        "reach",
        "get in touch",
        "message",
        "meeting",
        "connect",
        "intro"
      ],
      "evidence": [
        "https://dbhurley.com/connect"
      ]
    },
    {
      "id": "record.ventures",
      "type": "fact",
      "text": "The public work record lists 58 companies, systems, and experiments: 43 active, 8 paused, 4 acquired (Mautic, WebSpark, CRMery, TechVets), and 3 archived.",
      "status": "current",
      "as_of": "2026-11-01",
      "keywords": [
        "companies",
        "startups",
        "ventures",
        "track record",
        "how many",
        "portfolio",
        "exits"
      ],
      "evidence": [
        "https://dbhurley.com/startups"
      ]
    },
    {
      "id": "record.papers",
      "type": "fact",
      "text": "Has published 11 open-access research and technical works on AI agent infrastructure. Publication on dbhurley.com does not itself imply peer review.",
      "status": "current",
      "as_of": "2026-11-01",
      "keywords": [
        "papers",
        "research",
        "publications",
        "paper",
        "academic"
      ],
      "evidence": [
        "https://dbhurley.com/papers",
        "https://dbhurley.com/research-standards"
      ]
    },
    {
      "id": "record.essays",
      "type": "fact",
      "text": "Has published about 530 essays since 2013.",
      "status": "current",
      "as_of": "2026-11-01",
      "keywords": [
        "essays",
        "blog",
        "writes",
        "writing",
        "posts",
        "articles"
      ],
      "evidence": [
        "https://dbhurley.com/blog"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "projects": [
    {
      "id": "cumulative-systems",
      "name": "Cumulative Systems",
      "status": "current",
      "role": "founder",
      "layer": "persistent model state",
      "url": "https://dbhurley.com/startups/cumulative-systems",
      "profile": "https://dbhurley.com/startups/cumulative-systems",
      "summary": "Cumulative Systems saves a model's own internal working state and reloads it directly, so the work continues instead of starting over. State can move between different models.",
      "keywords": [
        "ulc",
        "cusp",
        "state",
        "persistence",
        "cross-model"
      ],
      "embodies": [
        "trust-is-the-substrate",
        "machines-stop-talking",
        "inheritance-over-answers",
        "keep-the-work"
      ],
      "evidence": [
        "https://dbhurley.com/startups/cumulative-systems"
      ]
    },
    {
      "id": "pantasso",
      "name": "Pantasso",
      "status": "current",
      "layer": "governed company context",
      "url": "https://pantasso.com",
      "profile": "https://dbhurley.com/startups/pantasso",
      "summary": "Pantasso turns approved chats, documents, files, and business systems into cited answers, canonical records, honest gaps, and scoped access.",
      "keywords": [
        "knowledge",
        "enterprise",
        "citations",
        "company data",
        "context"
      ],
      "embodies": [
        "trust-is-the-substrate"
      ],
      "evidence": [
        "https://dbhurley.com/startups/pantasso",
        "https://pantasso.com"
      ]
    },
    {
      "id": "plasmate",
      "name": "Plasmate",
      "status": "current",
      "layer": "agent-readable web",
      "url": "https://plasmate.app",
      "profile": "https://dbhurley.com/startups/plasmate",
      "summary": "Plasmate compiles pages into a Semantic Object Model so agents can work with structure, intent, and affordances instead of raw HTML and pixels.",
      "keywords": [
        "browser",
        "som",
        "semantic object model",
        "scraping",
        "html"
      ],
      "embodies": [
        "trust-is-the-substrate",
        "web-new-majority",
        "request-not-visit"
      ],
      "evidence": [
        "https://dbhurley.com/startups/plasmate",
        "https://plasmate.app"
      ]
    },
    {
      "id": "ppl",
      "name": "ppl",
      "status": "current",
      "layer": "personal relationships",
      "url": "https://withppl.com",
      "profile": "https://dbhurley.com/startups/ppl",
      "summary": "ppl is a personal relationship manager. An AI agent imports your people, logs interactions, and tells you who needs your attention.",
      "keywords": [
        "crm",
        "relationships",
        "contacts",
        "friends",
        "family"
      ],
      "embodies": [],
      "evidence": [
        "https://dbhurley.com/startups/ppl",
        "https://withppl.com"
      ]
    },
    {
      "id": "vox-petra",
      "name": "Vox Petra",
      "status": "current",
      "layer": "creative",
      "url": "https://voxpetra.com",
      "profile": "https://dbhurley.com/now",
      "summary": "A music label and creative house. The work is artists, catalogs, and songs that last.",
      "keywords": [
        "music",
        "label",
        "songs",
        "artists"
      ],
      "embodies": [],
      "evidence": [
        "https://dbhurley.com/now",
        "https://voxpetra.com"
      ]
    },
    {
      "id": "mautic",
      "name": "Mautic",
      "status": "acquired",
      "role": "founder",
      "layer": "marketing automation",
      "url": "https://mautic.org",
      "profile": "https://dbhurley.com/startups/mautic",
      "summary": "Open source marketing automation, founded by David Hurley and acquired by Acquia in 2019.",
      "keywords": [
        "marketing automation",
        "open source",
        "acquia"
      ],
      "embodies": [],
      "evidence": [
        "https://dbhurley.com/startups/mautic",
        "https://mautic.org"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "positions_url": "https://dbhurley.com/positions.json",
  "record_url": "https://dbhurley.com/startups",
  "sources_policy": "Every claim links to first-party evidence. Do not present a claim as current after its expires date. If a question is not answered here, say it is not on the public record rather than inferring.",
  "signature": {
    "alg": "Ed25519",
    "kid": "dbhurley-f33a68c04486",
    "canonicalization": "sorted-keys-json",
    "value": "tkQXrpIduW6_Oxjsx6S8KKiD9PYl2sPz3q4U7Xd41UgoUPmQlXfh7FS3Z5I2ZzIoIKTOJyU1-UFZ9ATtZczXAQ"
  }
}