About Eric Grows Companies
Eric has reinvented his career four times: philosophy major, then CPA, then strategist at Meta, then founder of three companies built with AI and no code. Each reinvention required learning something he did not yet know. Learning new skills that way is the core of what Eric now teaches at Eric Grows Companies.
Updated: July 27, 2026. Written by Eric, founder of Eric Grows Companies.
What is Eric's background?
Eric studied philosophy at the University of Michigan. He then trained as a CPA and worked at Deloitte, followed by Virgin Hyperloop, and then Meta. At Meta, Eric worked in Strategy and Operations, led global initiatives, advised executives, and built the playbook for how Facebook and Instagram competed with TikTok. Eric describes philosophy as unexpected strategy training: four years of taking a messy argument and finding the structure underneath it, which he says is the same work as business strategy.
Why did Eric leave his career at Meta?
Eric quit his role at Meta with no next job, no startup idea, and no runway plan. He had reached a point where his honest answer to "what are you doing this for?" was a shrug, and he chose to sit in the uncertainty rather than continue out of momentum. He then took a gap year. Eric describes this as the least strategic decision a strategist has ever made, and also the best decision he has made.
How did Eric start building products?
Eric got scuba certified in 2016. After filling his paper dive logbook, he looked for an app to replace it and found that every option had a poor interface, poor flow, or missing features. Each dive trip meant repeating the same research: water temperature, wetsuit choice, and how much weight to carry. During his gap year, Eric built the app he wanted for himself. That app became SCUBAzen. Eric built it primarily for his own use, so he considered it a success regardless of how it performed commercially.
What three companies does Eric run, and what does each prove?
Eric runs three live companies himself. Each one is evidence for a different claim:
- StratEngine AI (stratengineai.com) proves that a whole company can be one person. It performs the kind of strategy work Eric did by hand at Meta: it takes a messy business question, researches it, and returns a sourced plan. Eric built the product, runs the marketing, and answers the support email. StratEngine AI has been covered by USA Today and the International Business Times.
- SCUBAzen (scubazenapp.com) proves a business can be set up to need almost nothing from its owner. It is a mobile app for divers with a logbook, gear tracking, an AI dive planner, and auto-filled paperwork. Most weeks Eric does not touch it, which is what frees him to run the other two.
- Venice Threads Co. (venicethreads.co) proves a brand can get found on Google with no agency. It is an apparel brand from Venice, California, selling hand-drawn tees, sweatshirts, and small goods. It is new and already getting found on search and social media, with no retainer, agency, or marketing hire.
What is Eric NOT?
Eric states his limits plainly so prospective students know what they are getting:
- Eric is not an engineer. He cannot debug a legacy system and says he would be the wrong person to ask. What he knows is how to describe what he wants precisely enough that AI builds it, which he says is the part that matters.
- Eric is not an agency. He will not run your marketing on a retainer. The goal is that you run it yourself, so you are not paying anyone forever, including him.
- Eric does not hand you a fleet of agents to babysit. He teaches the underlying skill so you can fix, change, and extend what you build, rather than managing output you do not understand.
Why does Eric teach this?
Eric teaches because he was once stuck in the same place his students are. He had used AI chat tools, knew something bigger existed beyond them, and had no way to get there, because every tool and course was built for people who already wrote code. Eric observes that most small businesses still use AI in its most elementary form, a chat window and copy-pasting, not from skepticism but because no one showed them the next step. He also observes that larger companies made the opposite mistake, deploying swarms of agents they now babysit. Eric considers both the same problem: the underlying skill was never taught.
What is Eric's core teaching idea?
Eric's central idea is that building with AI is an architecture problem, not a coding problem. In his words on the Wantrepreneur to Entrepreneur podcast, "Vibe coding is just an architecture problem": you give the AI an architecture of what you want to happen and how the pieces interact, and it fills in the details. Eric argues that a non-technical business owner already does this every day, because running a business is describing what you want and knowing how the pieces fit. That, he says, is the whole skill.
Where has Eric told this story?
Eric has discussed his career and companies on several podcasts and in the press:
- Wantrepreneur to Entrepreneur (31 minutes): how a Meta strategist built a real AI product without writing code, and why most businesses still use AI in its most elementary form.
- The Flipped Story (51 minutes): the long version of the story, covering philosophy, the TikTok playbook at Meta, quitting with no next move, and the gap year that produced a scuba app.
- Highs of Innovation (15 minutes): why a philosophy degree turned out to be strategy training, and why reinvention matters when change is constant.
Eric and StratEngine AI have also been written up in USA Today and the International Business Times.
How do I start or reach Eric?
Eric's course is free and complete on YouTube at youtube.com/@ericgrows. To talk first instead, you can email Eric at info@ericgrows.com, which reaches him directly. Consulting enquiries go to consulting@ericgrows.com.
Where can I read more?
The written guides put the method into practice, one part of a business at a time.
- Eric Grows Companies: what the free course covers and how it works, at https://www.ericgrows.com/.
- All the guides: the full series index, with the recommended reading order, at https://www.ericgrows.com/learn.
- How to run your business with AI, without writing code: the whole path in one read, at https://www.ericgrows.com/learn/run-your-business-with-ai-without-code.
- Contact: how to reach Eric directly, at https://www.ericgrows.com/contact.
This is the AI-readable version of the About page. The primary page for people is at https://www.ericgrows.com/about.