In Practice: Nick Susi Is Tired of Taxonomies
On resisting labels, designing for serendipity, and why culture doesn’t move in straight lines.
I met
because he told me about a DAO (lol, remember all that?).He’d reached out to share RADAR, a futurist collective he was working on, and what was supposed to be a quick intro turned into a full conversation. That hasn’t changed since—we’ve stayed in touch, traded ideas, and he’s become one of the people I trust most to send something smart and unexpected. I read his newsletter religiously. I learn from it every time. And he often reads the first draft of every long-form piece I write. I trust his brain immensely.
Nick’s path into strategy didn’t follow a neat arc. He studied at Berklee, ran a music management company, and found himself pulled toward the bigger picture: brand, media, creative ecosystems, and how all aspects of culture interlock. In 2016, unsure how to make the leap, he launched his own reset—committing to meet one new person every day for 90 days. By the end of the summer, he’d met nearly 100 people, landed a role at Complex, and built relationships that would quietly shape his future. Since then, he’s led strategy for dotdotdash, The Fader, and Life+Times, while publishing sharp, almost writing that feels less like a business case study and more like a psychic download.
In this interview, we talk about the invisible value of reaching out, why childhood chores still shape how he works, and how AI might become a serendipity engine—if we let it. He makes a strong case for resisting the urge to label everything and reminds us that culture doesn’t move in straight lines. It bounces, recoils, reacts. Just like people do.
Nick isn’t guessing where things are going. He’s been listening the whole time.
1. What’s the real story of how you got here? (Read: not the LinkedIn version)
90 Days of Intros
Back in 2016, I’d been running a music talent management company for several years with my business partner. But I found myself increasingly drawn to brand, media, creative agencies, and how all aspects of culture are interlocked and shift together, well beyond just music. I felt stuck. On paper, I ran a music business. My degree from Berklee College of Music said, “this guy does music good.” My existing network was music-specific. I was wary of throwing applications and cover letters into the ether. So that summer, I made a plan (cue Nathan Fielder meme). For 90 days, I’d meet one new person every day. By the end of each conversation, I’d ask them to introduce me to at least one new person relevant to where I was trying to go. And then I did it. By the end of the summer, I had almost 100 new contacts. Every person is an open door, a potential opportunity, even if it’s not obvious at first. So many threads in my professional and personal life now trace back to that summer. That process led to my job at Complex. It led to close friendships I still value deeply today. And I’ve repeated that same process several times since, whenever I’m navigating a new role, space or idea. Whenever I feel stuck, I stretch out through new connections. Now, more than ever, It’s easy to get in touch with someone — to find their email, to slide into their DMs. You can just do stuff reach out.
2. What’s something that quietly rewired how you work?
Everything Is Just Acorns
When I was a kid, my parents had a little lake house in Connecticut. Sounds idyllic, but it was not without its chores. Every winter, the lake would recede, exposing the sandy beach and hundreds of acorns that had fallen into the shallows. All those exposed acorns had to be dealt with, at least, according to my dad. He would hand me and my brother each a tin Folgers coffee can, and send us out to collect them, one by one. Plunk. Plunk. Plunk. Perhaps it would have been a satisfying sound, if only it didn’t take so long. My back ached from bending down over and over again. Sand got everywhere, on my hands, in my shoes, all over my clothes. It was extremely slow, monotonous work. From my recollection, we’d be out there for hours, filling up can after can. And at the end? There was no reward. Just a boy and his full bucket. I hated it. I dreaded its arrival every year. How could my dad make us do something like this? This was child labor! There was nothing to do, but just zone out, lock in and push through until the deed was done. But now, decades later, I think about those acorns all the time. Every day is full of tedious, grinding work. But nothing is actually that difficult if you just zone out, lock in and pick up one acorn at a time.
3. What’s a piece of media you’ve rewatched or reread an embarrassing number of times?
In Rainbows - Radiohead
Radiohead’s In Rainbows is my favorite album of all time. I must’ve listened to it hundreds, maybe over a thousand times. The first time I heard it, I imagined it felt like hearing a Beethoven symphony in the 1800s. Radiohead is a master of many things, but what stands out most is their meticulous detail and experimentation with compositional structure and form. It’s rare that I hear this in modern music. Let me nerd out for a second — “Nude” is a palindrome, the beginning and end play the same forwards and backwards. “Weird Fishes” echoes the minimalist pulse of Philip Glass or Steve Reich. “All I Need” ends by playing nearly every note in the scale at once. It should sound dissonant, yet it’s this beautiful, cathartic release. “Videotape” hides the downbeat in a syncopated loop that creates this hypnotic momentum. Over time, I’ve realized the music theory and ear training I learned at Berklee is more than just a party trick. A surprising number of musician friends have ended up as strategists. There’s something about the way a musician’s brain is wired. The way we see invisible structures, systems, patterns. And lyrics? They’re insights. Emotional experiences and truths compressed into a few potent words. That’s the strategist’s job too.
4. What’s an opinion or trend in the industry that makes you roll your eyes?
The Era of The Taxonomy Trap
The current meta is stuck in The Taxonomy Trap — not everything or everyone needs or wants to be labeled. (Yes, this take is making fun of itself.) There’s an obsession with coining new terms and portmanteaus to describe every fleeting “trend” (read: fad), or group of people. But most of these labels are just marketing shortcuts to position and sell products. They rarely reflect the true complexity of groups of people, who are not monoliths. Instead of labeling from a distance, we should build real relationships from the inside and ask, how do you actually self-identify? This fixation on novelty blinds us to history. Many “new” things aren’t new at all — we just haven’t done the work of remembering. And so, we fail to learn. We speak in absolutes. But culture doesn’t move in straight lines. Culture has physics. Newton’s Third Law applies to the physics of cultural shifts — every action has an equal and opposite reaction. Culture is also an elastic band. Culture is a reflection of a group of people. Pull too hard, too fast on a few people, and it snaps back. You can’t change culture without moving all or most people of a group, together. I wish more people in this space prioritized real relationships and the physics of culture, rather than chasing novelty and preaching absolutism. (Though, of course, it sells!)
5. What’s a moment in your career that you felt totally in control? What about the opposite?
Control is a Myth
Control is a myth. I feel like the possible answers to this question say more about a person’s mindset in a given moment than it does about reality. Life is a sequence of chaotic, uncertain moments. It’s how we choose to show up that shapes our experience. Through our attitude. Our mindset. The boundaries we set, with others, and with ourselves. Managing artists? Chaos. Crazy boss? Chaos. COVID? Chaos. Starting a company? Chaos. Building someone else’s? Chaos. Health? Chaos. Tariffs? Chaos. And yet, through it all, I feel so grateful for the creatively fulfilling opportunities I’ve had, and the inspiring people I’ve had the chance to work through the chaos with.
6. What’s in your media diet right now that’s actually influencing your work?
AI as a Serendipity Engine
Recently, I’ve been exploring designing AI as a serendipity engine in commerce. My media diet on this topic has directly informed a lot of the AI work we’re doing with some of our partners at dotdotdash:
Into The Universe of Technical Images & Communicology, by Vilem Flusser
The Three Princes of Serendip
The Design of Browsing & Berrypicking Techniques For The Online Search Interface, by Marcia J. Bates
Hyper-Optimization, by Tony Wang/OAS
Philip K. Dick
Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time walkthroughs on YouTube
John Cage & Aleatoric composition history on YouTube
7. What’s a shift in tone, taste, or language that you think is coming—but hasn’t hit yet?
Businesses will learn the hard way — they’ll be slow to figure out they need to stop chasing fleeting TikTok fads and instead double down on brand, only for AI to become the dominant commerce channel and interface, one that strips away any sort of controlled brand experience.
The more AI floods the world with slop, the more we’ll find value and meaning in the opposite — physical, tangible, weighted, high-quality, crafted objects.
8. What’s something you wanted early in your career that doesn’t matter to you anymore?
Life Stage + People > Brands + Title
For me, the brand you work for, the clients you serve and the title you hold matter far less than the life stage of the company, the specific challenges it’s facing at that stage and the people you’re solving them with. I’ve always felt this way, but over time, I’ve become more confident and validated in that belief.
I hope you enjoyed meeting Nick Susi. Catch up with him on LinkedIn and Instagram.