David Bland — Co-Founder

Are you tired of high-stakes decisions landing on your desk still half-formed? You see opportunities in the market. Competitors are moving. But inside your organization, decisions stall. The same meeting gets scheduled again and again. Nothing actually moves. You can’t agree on what must be proven before spending more time or money. Teams are working from different assumptions. And by the time a decision reaches you, everything still feels uncertain. At that point, decisions slow down or stop. What you want instead is for decisions to arrive ready, ready to move forward, adjust, or stop early with confidence. So you can save time, avoid misallocated investment, and move faster on what actually works. That’s what I help teams do. I’m David J. Bland. I work with executive teams on high-uncertainty, high-capital decisions. I’m the lead author of Testing Business Ideas (100,000+ copies, 20+ languages). Over the last 15 years, I’ve worked with leaders at companies like DuPont, Toyota, and Adobe, where the cost of being wrong is high. What I’ve found is simple: - Decisions don’t slow down because of strategy. - They slow down because risk hasn’t been made explicit, shared, or tested soon enough. The Precoil EMT System solves that. It’s not another decision-making process. It’s a decision readiness standard that helps teams prepare decisions before funding, momentum, and sunk cost make them harder to change. EMT stands for Extract, Map, and Test. - Extract makes assumptions visible so teams stop debating opinions. - Map aligns risk across teams so decisions don’t get stuck or escalated. - Test turns risk into learning so you can move forward with confidence. The result is shorter decision cycles, fewer late-stage escalations, clearer capital allocation, and higher confidence without endless analysis. This approach has helped organizations cut millions in wasted investment, test before committing major capital, and move from ideas to evidence before scaling. If you’re responsible for high-stakes decisions and want them to move faster with more confidence, send me a message.

Stackforce AI infers this person is a decision-making consultant specializing in high-uncertainty environments.

Location: Sacramento, California, United States

Experience: 26 yrs 3 mos

Skills

Decision-making
Risk Management

Career Highlights

Expert in high-stakes decision-making.
Creator of the Precoil EMT System.
Author of internationally best-selling book.

Work Experience

How I Tested That Podcast

Podcast Host (2 yrs 1 mo)

Wiley

Author (6 yrs 5 mos)

Strategyzer

Partner (9 yrs 10 mos)

Precoil

Founder (10 yrs 6 mos)

Neo Innovation, Inc.

Principal Advisor (2 yrs 3 mos)

BigVisible Solutions

Principal (1 yr 10 mos)

N/A

Agile / Lean Advisor (1 yr 8 mos)

AOL

Lean / Agile Contractor (6 mos)

comScore, Inc.

Senior Technical Project Manager (11 mos)

OpSource

Integration Engineer (1 yr)

Finetre Corporation

Development Manager (7 yrs 9 mos)

David Bland

Co-Founder

Sacramento, California, United States26 yrs 3 mos experience

Most Likely To SwitchHighly Stable

Key Highlights

Expert in high-stakes decision-making.
Creator of the Precoil EMT System.
Author of internationally best-selling book.

Stackforce AI infers this person is a decision-making consultant specializing in high-uncertainty environments.

Contact

Skills

Core Skills

Decision-makingRisk Management

Other Skills

Business StrategyLean InnovationArtificial Intelligence (AI)Corporate StrategyStrategyExecutive CoachingExperimentationDesign ThinkingAgile MethodologiesInnovation ManagementBusiness Model InnovationProduct Innovation

About

Experience

How i tested that podcast

Podcast Host

Mar 2024 – Present · 2 yrs 1 mo · Remote

I’m the host of the How I Tested That podcast. It is a show dedicated to unpacking how innovators, founders, and leaders systematically test assumptions to de-risk bold ideas and build high-confidence decisions. Each episode goes beyond platitudes to explore real experiments, real trade-offs, and real learning.
At the heart of How I Tested That is a simple premise: the quality of a decision is defined by the quality of the risk you’ve uncovered and assessed, not by whether the idea ultimately “succeeds.” Through candid conversations with practitioners across industries, I illuminate the methods, mindsets, and mechanics that turn uncertainty into insight.
Listen and learn more at https://www.precoil.com/how-i-tested-that

Wiley

Author

Nov 2019 – Present · 6 yrs 5 mos

Now in over 20 different languages, my internationally best selling business book Testing Business Ideas, is the actionable follow up to Business Model Generation and Value Proposition Design with Alexander Osterwalder. 7 out of 10 new products fail to deliver on expectations and our book aims to reverse that statistic. Testing Business Ideas is a practical guide that contains a library of hands-on techniques for rapidly testing new business ideas. It's available now from Wiley.

Strategyzer

Partner

Jun 2016 – Present · 9 yrs 10 mos · United States · Hybrid

I partner with Strategyzer to power their test and learn practices. This ranges from leading the Testing Business Ideas Masterclasses to private workshops and being a Strategyzer Coach for corporations.

Precoil

Founder

Oct 2015 – Present · 10 yrs 6 mos · Greater Sacramento · Hybrid

At Precoil, I help executive teams install decision infrastructure for high-uncertainty, high-capital strategic bets.
Using the Precoil EMT System (Extract–Map–Test), we make risk explicit, shared, and testable before major funding, momentum, and sunk costs make decisions harder to change. The result is clear Commit, Correct, or Cut verdicts backed by evidence rather than opinion, slide decks, or forced consensus.
Each EMT cycle prepares a single decision. Across decisions, it builds organizational decision capacity — reducing late-stage escalations, shortening decision cycles, and improving capital allocation discipline.
My work is not innovation theater or idea generation. It is the installation of a decision-readiness standard that enables leaders to think big, test small, and commit deliberately.
Clients include: Adobe, Alaska Airlines, American Express, AT&T, Autodesk, Bayer, Behr, Colgate, DuPont, GE, HP, IBM, JPMorgan Chase, Merck, Philips, Salesforce, Toyota, Walmart, Yale University, and others.

Decision-MakingRisk ManagementBusiness StrategyLean Innovation

Neo innovation, inc.

Principal Advisor

Sep 2013 – Dec 2015 · 2 yrs 3 mos · San Francisco Bay Area

Acquired by Pivotal, Neo was founded on the idea of using balanced teams (design, product, development) to rapidly test business ideas in the market.
As a Principal Advisor in the San Francisco office, I advised Bay Area corporations (Adobe, Toyota, etc) on applying lean startup to their new product ideas.
Along with the Neo leadership team, I codified our lean startup, design thinking and agile practices into a series of hands-on workshops. This training was part of Neo's global effort to influence how organizations build their own internal innovation capabilities.

Bigvisible solutions

Principal

Nov 2011 – Sep 2013 · 1 yr 10 mos · San Francisco Bay Area

Acquired by Accenture, BigVisible's focus was Agile Transformations for Fortune 500 companies.
As a Principal at BigVisible located in the San Francisco Bay Area, I worked with executives, middle managers and teams to shift from large batch project based process to small batch product based work.
I helped lead the transformation effort at Hotwire (Expedia) in San Francisco across 20+ teams. I also collaborated with other industry leaders on pioneering lean startup services for companies like GE (Fastworks) with Eric Ries.

N/a

Agile / Lean Advisor

Feb 2010 – Oct 2011 · 1 yr 8 mos · Washington DC-Baltimore Area

I helped a privately owned, counterterrorism startup located outside of Washington DC build, measure and learn in the market. Our clients included DHS and several private institutions.
My roles ranged from coaching agile, extreme programming, lean ux, lean startup and customer discovery to rapid experimentation.

Aol

Lean / Agile Contractor

Jul 2009 – Jan 2010 · 6 mos · Washington DC-Baltimore Area

While working at AOL HQ in Virginia, I used my expertise to help multiple AOL commerce teams apply the concepts of agile and lean startup to their product and feature work.

Comscore, inc.

Senior Technical Project Manager

Aug 2008 – Jul 2009 · 11 mos · Washington DC-Baltimore Area

While working at ComScore HQ in Reston VA, I was the technical lead on both Mobile and Video Metrix product lines.

Opsource

Integration Engineer

Jun 2007 – Jun 2008 · 1 yr · Washington DC-Baltimore Area

Acquired by Dimension Data, I worked with OpSource Engineering in Virginia. I designed and integrated the unit based pricing model for OpSource Analytics.

Finetre corporation

Development Manager

Aug 1999 – May 2007 · 7 yrs 9 mos · Washington DC-Baltimore Area

Acquired by Ebix, I joined AnnuityNet (later called Finetre) shortly after it was founded, I began my journey as a designer and front end developer. As the company grew, I became the development management lead for all of our multi-million dollar integrations with financial institutions (Fidelity, Edward Jones, UBS, Robert Baird, Legg Mason, etc).