About
I’ve spent my life building what comes next.
I’m James O’Loughlin. I have always been curious about the future: how we imagine it, how we build it, and how we decide which parts of it are worth pursuing.
That curiosity began more than four decades ago when I started writing code on an Apple ][e. It carried me through the earliest years of the web, digital design, content management systems, cryptocurrency, artificial intelligence, and the constantly changing ways people discover information and make decisions.
But technology is only part of the story. The deeper question has always been: what are we looking for, and how do we decide which path might take us there?
Why this exists
I created What We’re Looking For to explore the relationship between pursuit and direction.
We are always trying to improve something: our health, performance, work, relationships, understanding, circumstances, or sense of who we are.
But improvement is not automatically progress. We can become highly efficient at traveling down a path that is not good for us.
This project asks what we are pursuing, why it matters, how we measure progress, what the pursuit gives us, what it costs, and whether it is helping us become the person we want to be.
Improvement is not only about moving faster. It is about moving in a direction worthy of the effort.
My path
I built my first website more than 30 years ago and later created my own content management system using Java WebObjects, before modern CMS platforms became commonplace.
I was an early adopter of cryptocurrency and began mining Bitcoin in 2011.
Today, I work at the intersection of digital strategy, artificial intelligence, search, brand visibility, and Generative Engine Optimization.
As a founder of Pixaura and GEOGrow.ai, I help companies understand how they are discovered and represented, not only by traditional search engines, but within AI answers, language models, recommendation systems, and the emerging technologies influencing how people choose.
I have also taught Web Design and UI/UX at DAAP and the Art Academy of Cincinnati. Teaching has kept me close to a question that applies far beyond websites: once someone arrives, what helps them decide where to go next?
Projects and links
A few places to find my work, projects, and the things I am building or practicing.
Movement, competition, and improvement
Athletic pursuit is a major part of who I am. I ride and race bicycles, run, train, and spend a lot of time thinking about improvement, not only how to become faster or stronger, but why the pursuit matters in the first place.
Athletics makes the questions behind this project tangible: discomfort, patience, failure, injury, aging, community, discipline, obsession, recovery, and changing expectations.
Some of my clearest thinking happens while moving. Sport has taught me that improvement is rarely a straight line. It requires effort, recovery, humility, adjustment, and the willingness to return.
What matters most
My greatest build is not a company, a platform, or a piece of technology. It is the life I share with my family.
They have shaped how I understand love, responsibility, resilience, joy, and what it means to move forward together.
What I’m looking for now
I am still excited about technology and what comes next. But I am increasingly interested in the human questions underneath it all.
Why do we pursue what we pursue? What happens after we get it? How do our ambitions change? How do we know whether a path is helping us grow, or simply keeping us moving?
I do not expect to find one final answer. I want to ask better questions, listen closely, and learn from the paths other people have taken.
Take the path that loves you forward.