Erik's CV

Erik Schimek is an engineer of solutions for systemic, intractable problems. His career spans the digital underground, custom furniture manufacturing, and strategic political management -- all united by a commitment to radical integrity and high-fidelity execution. 

Erik helps high-integrity brands cut through the noise of an internet increasingly flooded with digital spam. By taking on only a few projects at a time, he ensures that authentic products get the focus and signal strength they need to grow.

If you have an interesting project in mind, please drop Erik a line.

 

Recent Commercial and Nonprofit Projects

Alice Riot: Website design, product design, marketing for artisanal women's scarves based on the work of local Minnesota artists.

Paleo f(x):  Served on the Board for several years, helped to launch the Entrepreneur f(x) Event and assisted with the optimization of the website which led to a 31% increase in sales conversions.

REV 1211: Full website and messaging re-design, to help communicate the mission and scope of the organization's Chrisitan mission work.

Wild Superfoods: Helped to optimize Abel James's ecommerce website for conversions, as well as additional back-end "stack improvements". 

Xcimer Energy: Nuclear fusion startup. Assisted with early pitch deck design and messaging.

Rabb Joska Gypsy Cellar Records: A friend's grandfather had his website hacked and taken over, a labor of love celebrating his father's music. They sell a lot of CDs in Europe and that depends on having the 'same old website' the vendors in Europe know and trust. So my friend Rajo and I replicated the old website on Shopify, pretty much down to the pixel. 

Bright Light Ventures: Website design and messaging for a VC-adjacent startup advisory firm.

ARX Fit: Assisted with the Covid-era transition to home gyms, splitting their ad budget 50/50 between residential leads and business leads without increasing costs by optimizing their Meta advertising targeting. This roughly doubled ARX advertising conversion efficiency and allowed ARX to pivot to adding in "home gyms" at minimal marginal additional cost during a time of gym shutdowns and closures.



Erik's History and Extended CV

Dissent BBS: The OS/2 Machine and the 612 Underground, Circa 1991-1995

Before I could host a community, I had to build the world it lived in. This was a DIY build—a hand-wired tower of scavenged motherboard, CPU, sound card, graphics card, with mismatched hard drives and modems that I had to trick into talking to each other. I ran the Renegade BBS software on OS/2, fighting a constant war against IRQ conflicts and modem jumper settings just to keep a multi-line network alive while I worked off of the same machine. The content was a digital melting pot of ideas ranging from politics, culture, philosophy, technology, music, religion and meaning, with message forum titles cribbed from the brilliantly insane The Illuminatus! Trilogy. As the high-contrast “DISSENT” logo and the Columbus Day Riot webzine suggest, this was a local headquarters for seeing through the “OBEY” signs of the era. I realized that if the system is broken and stupid, the only sane response is to build your own.

Rising Design, Digital foundations & ‘Daedalus Rising’, Circa 1991-1998

This era marked my first venture into professional web architecture during the consumer internet’s infancy, a pivotal transition from the cyberpunk underground to building functional digital systems. Cribbing part of my pseudonym from the BBS, Daedalus Rising, the company Rising Design moved from the digital fringe toward helping the first wave of businesses navigate the online world. At Hamline University, the state of Minnesota’s oldest university (predating the foundation of the state), this intersection of technology and scholarship earned several “Best of Department” writing awards. This culminated in a historic milestone: I submitted the first-ever website in the school’s history as an assignment, using the medium itself to deconstruct the aesthetics and philosophy of cyberpunk. This period was a blur of multidisciplinary output, ranging from writing the didactic art panels for a Francisco Goya Disasters of War art exhibition to drafting the first website for the Russian Immortal Warrior Festival. It was the moment the cyberpunk ethos met professional and academic rigor.

Erik Organic, Artisanal E-Commerce: The Logistics of Trust, circa 1999-2020

A twenty-year proof-of-concept in excellence. I bridged the gap between horse-drawn Amish workshops and a global digital marketplace, driving over $30M in revenue on handshake deals and a 99.7% satisfaction rate. At the time, marketing handcrafted Amish furniture online was considered impossible due to production and shipping complexities. I was the first person in the country ‘to market’ with solid wood cedar chests, dining tables, and a number of other products. While competitors offshored their labor, I stayed in Minnesota proving that American craftsmanship could win on merit.

See The 99.7% Ledger: Engineering Trust to a Presidential Standard for a detailed version of this story.

The Changeless Face of Education in America, Education research & graduate school, circa 2001

Written during my tenure as a schoolteacher, my research examined the persistent rigidity of the American educational model despite decades of evidence favoring student-results-focused alternatives. Central to this analysis is the Eight Year Study of the 1930s—the most comprehensive longitudinal research in educational history—which proved that experimental, multidisciplinary curricula significantly improved student success. This research served as the technical blueprint for my early career.

Under the mentorship of Bill Zimniewicz and alternative education pioneer Wayne Jennings, I architected a first-of-its-kind program that turned that deficit into a revenue source so innovative it drew students from five neighboring districts. I transformed a failing distance learning program into a student-directed, profitable business model that drew in students from five neighboring school districts. This work was a first-principles application of theory to institutional reform, proving that even the most stagnant systems can be re-engineered.

Austin Primal Living Group, Austin Paleo Community event organizing, circa 2012-2017

I organized and hosted ~50 events focused on ancestral health and other systemic critiques of modernity. This was a private testing ground where I engaged in direct Q&A and potluck dialogues with figures including Daniel Quinn (Ishmael), David Graeber (Debt: The First 5,000 Years), Darryl Edwards (Primal Play), Michelle Norris (Primal Uprising), Abel James (The Wild Diet), and Dr. Lane Sebring. These peer-level interactions at my home crystallized "the Quinn Paradox", "The Iron Law of Story" and other ideas I had been developing, and finalized the need for the practical tool for ‘self-hacking’ which became Meliora.