The idea and
the execution are
the same person.

Adam Lisagor. Filmmaker. Builder. Abstract sequentialist.

Here’s me, recontextualized as a .com page. I don’t love it.

First, I was a filmmaker. I went to Tisch, found myself in VFX (in Hollywood, working on blockbusters), but tech always called for me, because I am a big-ass nerd. So I set out to make software for a new thing called iPhone. Turned out the world needed my knack for story more than it needed my Twitter app, so I started a video studio for tech (I like to say on accident—whoops I made a company) called Sandwich Video.

For sixteen years, Sandwich has introduced the world to companies like Slack, Square, Airbnb, Robinhood… Then the next revolution(s) happened, tech called again, and I handed the studio keys to my team and set out to turn Sandwich itself into software. I learned to build on my own. I call that Portable.

Portable is the whole workspace rebuilt as software, a place where expertise gets captured and carried and put to work anywhere, by anyone who needs it. I’m building the machine that builds the machines, which sounds insufferable right up until you watch someone build their own tools and pull off in an afternoon what used to take a month.

The other half of my attention is out past the horizon in Theater, where I’m fairly convinced the 2D rectangle was always a compromise we accepted because we had no choice, and that the next hundred years of cinema are layered and immersive. So I keep a foot in film and a foot in software, a foot in story and a foot in system, which is more feet than most people have, but sometimes you should optimize your footcount to stay competitive.

And I built Hovercraft on the same premise of layered media within the frame, back on my old-meets-new bullshit. It’s a macOS video utility that refuses to accept that the Mac is not a Vision Pro. (And here’s a special secret: under the hood, Hovercraft runs on the same core tech as Theater.)

I can’t stop connecting things that weren’t yet connected. Everything I build touches every other thing I build. That turns out to be worth a lot to someone who has everything except the guy who notices the obvious thing nobody else noticed.

Selected work

A handful of things I’m proud of.

Each one makes its own case, so I’ll let them. This is nowhere near the full list. The full list lives in the archive, and it’s long.

Sandwich

Studio

Sixteen years of films that taught Silicon Valley how to talk about its own products. The body of work that made everything after it credible.

Theater

visionOS app

The future of cinema, on Apple Vision Pro. Immersive, stereoscopic, and built on the conviction that the screen was always a compromise we accepted because we had no choice.

Hovercraft

visionOS app

Screenshare in the air. A spatial computing tool that took a flat, boring primitive and gave it a body. Built by Sandwich Vision.

Portable

Platform

The studio turned into software. A system where expertise is captured, carried, and put to work anywhere. The machine that makes the machines.

Lisagor

Portable Expert

Me, bottled. The way I think and build, extracted from three years of building Portable and put on the shelf of the marketplace I built. If you want the unabridged version, it is for hire.

How I think

A few things I believe, stated without the usual hedging.

The idea and the execution are the same person.

Most of the money and time in any creative project disappears into the gap between the person who dreamed it up and the person who has to make it real. I have spent my whole career being both of those people, which means there is no gap to fall into, and nothing gets lost in the handoff because there is no handoff.

Taste is the job.

Anyone can hand you a list of options. The actual work, the part worth paying for, is knowing which one is right and being willing to say so out loud without a single qualifier. Taste isn't the garnish. It's the whole meal, and it tends to die the moment you try to delegate it.

I can't keep ideas in separate rooms.

Film keeps teaching me things about software, software keeps teaching me things about story, and I've given up trying to make them behave. The most useful thing I do is spot the line running between two things everyone else assumed were unrelated, and then build something on top of it.

Build the factory, not the car.

The second time I catch myself building the same thing by hand, I stop and go build the thing that builds it instead. An artifact is never only an artifact. It's quietly also a system for making that artifact, and more often than not the system is the part that matters.

The flat screen was always a compromise.

We accepted it because there wasn't another option, and now there is. I'm betting a good chunk of the next decade on the idea that immersive work isn't a party trick, it's simply where the story goes next, whether or not the rest of the world is ready to admit it yet.

The good ones see what's already there.

This isn't a brag, it's the job description. People who already have everything don't need another pair of hands in the room. They need someone who walks in, looks at the thing that's been sitting there the entire time, and quietly changes what the whole thing is about.

In my own words