Jim Marlow
Founder, Marlow Technology Advisors
I’m a preacher’s kid. My father was a Methodist minister for most of my childhood — a good storyteller who kept his sermons tight (he had a 15-minute rule he stuck to religiously). Over the years we caught him reusing sermon material at new churches. His defense was always the same: “Well, it was a good sermon, and they’ve never heard it here.”
That stuck with me. Not the reusing part — the fact that after decades of preaching, there was no good way to search, organize, or build on all that work.
I’ve spent most of my career in software — starting out writing code to get value out of GIS and market research tools, then moving into sales engineering, product management, and engineering leadership. I helped grow an ed-tech startup from 10 to 150 people before it sold in 2021. Today I work as a sales engineer in the AI space.
I’m also an Episcopalian, and over the past 14 years I’ve gotten to know our parish priests well. They’re sharp, curious people, and when LLMs started getting serious they had questions I could answer. One conversation led to a prototype: I took one priest’s 700+ sermons, built a simple archive with writing style profiles, and connected it to ChatGPT. It worked — really well.
That prototype became ThAD. I built the first full version as a technical demo, then finished it because the priest was actually using it every day. I added a second priest a few months later. Now ThAD is in beta with plans to grow.
ThAD is a product of Marlow Technology Advisors, my consulting practice focused on AI and LLM strategy. Building ThAD grew directly out of that work — advising companies on what these tools can do, and then proving it by building one.
Where ThAD Is Headed
ThAD started with clergy because that’s the community I know best — but the name has nothing to do with clergy for a reason. The core idea applies to anyone with a large body of written work: academics, attorneys, journalists, consultants — anyone who’s written enough that they can’t keep it all in their head anymore.
Right now I’m focused on growing the user base, refining the product, and providing the kind of hands-on support that only a small operation can. ThAD is a passion project backed by real infrastructure, and I’m building it for the long haul.
If you have questions, ideas, or a mountain of documents you’d like to put to work, I’d love to hear from you. We’re currently accepting beta applicants — apply here to get started.