About the founder
Hi, I'm John — builder, dad, new gardener.
Outdoors enthusiast by hobby, marketing technology leader by trade. GrowLog AI is what happens when you combine a love of nature with a desire to own your own destiny after hard times in the tech industry.
The short version
I've spent my career leading marketing and marketing technology teams at tech companies — building growth engines, wiring up data stacks, and shipping product. After several rounds of industry turbulence, I decided I wanted to build something of my own, on my own terms, rooted in something I actually love.
That something turned out to be the dirt in my backyard.
In 2025 I planted my first real vegetable garden. I was a total novice. I killed seedlings, planted too early, and asked ChatGPT a hundred questions that came back with generic answers — answers that didn't know my zone, my soil, or what I'd done last weekend. Every experienced gardener I met said the same thing: keep a journal.
So I built the journal I wished I had — one that remembers everything for me, knows my garden as well as I do, and turns this season into the foundation for every season after. That's GrowLog AI.
A life outdoors
The outdoors has been the through-line.
Some of my earliest formative memories are on the side of a mountain. Through middle and high school I spent summers mountaineering — climbing and backpacking in Colorado, Wyoming, British Columbia, and the wild stretches of northern Michigan. Those trips taught me to pay attention: to weather, to terrain, to the small signals that tell you what's about to happen.
That hasn't really changed. These days the outdoors looks like surfing, off-roading, camping with the family, and now gardening — slower, smaller in scale, but the same idea. Read the conditions. Adjust. Write it down.
Turns out, gardening and mountaineering have more in common than you'd think. Both reward patience, observation, and a good journal.
When I'm not in the garden
I play bass. Warm, melodic, a little bit dusty.
Live music has been part of my life as long as the outdoors has. I play bass and have written and recorded music under my own name and with Koobi Fora. I also laid down the bass tracks on the first two records from The Live Oaks — Back Focus and Hyde Street E.P.
Bands and gardens are surprisingly alike: both take a long time to come together, both depend on showing up week after week, and both are way better with people you love.
Home base
Patty, Dylan, Paxton — and the garden.
I live in Connecticut with my wife Patty and our two kids, Dylan and Paxton. They're the reason I want to grow food in the backyard, the reason I want to own my time, and a big reason GrowLog exists.
The garden is a shared project. Some weekends it's a science experiment, some weekends it's a salad. Either way, it's ours.
The work
Marketing technology, with the dirt under my nails.
For nearly two decades I've worked at the intersection of marketing, data, and technology — leading teams that built the systems behind growth, lifecycle, and customer experience for consumer and B2B companies.
Today, alongside building GrowLog AI, I run a marketing consultancy through my site johndering.com, helping founders and marketing leaders untangle their martech stacks, sharpen lifecycle programs, and ship growth work that actually compounds. GrowLog AI is the first thing I've built that's fully my own — and the first time the spreadsheet I'm staring at is also my dinner.
From my notebook
Subscribe to Grow Something Amazing!
My Substack — field notes from the garden, lessons from a first real season, and what I'm learning as I build GrowLog AI in public.
Grow with me
I'm tracking my 2026 season in GrowLog. Want to join?
Free to get started. Your garden, remembered — starting today.