About Me

I am a seasoned entrepreneur, skilled software engineer, talented artist, and adventurous spirit with a rich history of collaborating with numerous startups over the past two decades. I have played a pivotal role in driving the exponential growth of three companies, each surpassing a valuation of $1 billion, and have also embarked on my own entrepreneurial ventures.

Originally from Canada, I moved to San Francisco in 2009 and have recently been based primarily in New York. This blog serves as a personal journal, a platform for sharing my thoughts, and a valuable record of my experiences. It is heartening to receive occasional emails from readers who find my posts engaging and insightful.

I approach my work with a deep sense of competence and confidence, drawing from my extensive expertise and diverse skill set. I thrive on challenges and have consistently demonstrated my ability to navigate through various stages of growth and innovation. Beyond my professional pursuits, I have a passion for adventure, having climbed mountains, completed marathons, and embarked on long-distance cycling journeys.

I invite you to join me on this journey of exploration and discovery as we delve into the realms of entrepreneurship, software engineering, art, and the wonders of the world. Let’s embark on this exciting adventure together!

As a Professional #

I’ve worked at many startups, including Airbnb, Mesosphere (now known as D2IQ), Braze, and others.

My professional journey began with a Canadian oil and gas company specializing in manufacturing instrumentation for oil and gas exploration. Our tools were designed to measure pressure, temperature, and other metrics within wells, withstanding extreme conditions for extended periods.

In 2009, I joined a California-based company that provided telecom companies with mobile network telemetry tools and network optimization services. During my time there, I developed a highly optimized custom database, built an RPC system, and wrote the initial parser for Ericsson LTE layer two network data. The company was later acquired by Tektronix.

In 2013, I became part of the data infrastructure team at Airbnb. During my tenure, I made contributions to various open-source projects, including the Apache Mesos project, where I eventually became a PMC member. Additionally, I worked on projects like Chronos, SmartStack, Kafka, and more.

In 2015, I joined Mesosphere, a company founded by two former Airbnb colleagues and the creator of Mesos. My role involved scaling the company, establishing the sales team, and laying the groundwork for the service organization.

In 2018, I briefly joined Braze but decided to leave after six months to pursue my own entrepreneurial ventures.

You can find a copy of my résumé here.

Public Speaking #

I’ve given talks at many events, including conferences, meetups, and private engagements. Some of the conferences I’ve spoken at are QCon, All Things Open, MesosCon, ContainerCon, LinuxCon, and others.

Open Source #

I’ve contributed to a long list of open-source projects over the years. I am probably most well-known for creating a project called Conky. Today, I have more than 150 public GitHub projects, 2 of which have over 1,000 stars and 6 of which have over 100. Here are some of my projects:

• Conky, a system monitor for X
• ThetaGang, an implementation of “the wheel”, an options trading strategy
• dryoc, a pure-Rust general-purpose cryptography library based on the libsodium library (which is based on the legendary NaCl from djb)
• cracking-the-coding-interview-rust, solutions to interview problems from the book “Cracking the Coding Interview” in Rust
• genserver, an Elixir GenServer-inspired Rust library
• optimal-buy-cbpro, a Coinbase Pro trading bot for dollar cost averaging into “cryptos” if you like that sort of thing
• The HODLer Manifesto, a short manifesto on HODLing
• tweet-delete, a Twitter bot for deleting your tweets
• mother-of-dragons, a miner management tool for DragonMint/Innosilicon mining hardware
• labhub, a bot for integrating GitLab CI with GitHub open-source projects
• doge-streamer, a tool for streaming multiple webcams of my dog Doge from my apartment when I’m away to take the edge off the separation anxiety I feel when I leave her alone

Writings #

I’ve published many things over the years, in addition to the content on this blog, although much of it has been lost to internet rot. Here are a few things you can still find:

• Code Like a Pro in Rust, my first Rust programming book (note: this is an affiliate link)
• Idiomatic Rust, my second Rust programming book (note: this is an affiliate link)

Blog Stats #

Below are some stats for this blog for my fellow data nerds. If you want to dig deeper, head over to the GitHub repo.

Counts of posts and words by year:

Counts of posts and words by month:

Photography #

I’ve always been interested in photography, and my blog features plenty of original photography. You are welcome to use the imagery under the terms of the CC0 1.0 license if you’d like, which permits you to do whatever you want with it (no attribution required). Here’s one example of some photos.

Videography #

I have a neglected YouTube channel, and I occasionally streamed on Twitch in the past, but I lack the passion these days. Notably, my work was featured in a documentary about WeWork on Hulu (for some reason, I still haven’t received my internet money for that contribution).

Some of my YouTube content feels a bit cringe to me now, but I leave it out there anyway because some people seem to enjoy it 🙂

Adventures #

I’ve climbed mountains, run marathons, and done some long-distance cycling (randonneur style). Here are a few examples:

• I biked from SF to NYC unassisted in 27 days. I recorded a daily video log on YouTube
• I raced the Wolfpack Hustle Crash Race before the 2012 LA marathon, crashed 1 mile before the finish line, made it back to the start of the marathon, and then finished the marathon in under 4 hours
• I biked to the summit of Mauna Kea, a volcano in Hawaii, unassisted. The climb to Mauna Kea’s summit might be the longest continuous vertical climb in the world (from sea to summit is over 13,000ft in vertical gain)
• I biked from SF to Chico, through the northern Sierra Nevadas, and then on to summit Mount Shasta

Contact #

If you’d like to get in touch with me, the best way is good old-fashioned email, but please don’t contact me about products, services, or investment opportunities.

This Website #

The source code for this website is available on GitHub.