The TL;DR

I’m designing, coding, and shipping one new app a month 🧑🏻‍💻🎢. Or crashing and burning while I try 💥🔥. Either way, you’ll read all of it here with anything else I’ve learned along the way.

I’ve been an iOS developer at Acorns, GOAT (early employee), and Hodinkee. I’m now venturing out on my own, outside the comforts of corporate tech. Here’s my latest app: LUX, the sunscreen tracking game ☀️.

LUX is an app that makes sunscreen fun by using sunlight data collected by your Apple Watch!

I also post photos of Frank 🐶 frequently in the Notes. Frank doesn’t code or write but he is the master of the side-eye:

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My background

I spent the first decade of my career in athletic administration — most notably with the UCLA Men’s Golf team ⛳️ (where we won the last NCAA title before switching over to match play 🏆) and with the University of Washington’s Olympic Sports (where we did borderline NIL things before NIL was a thing).

But I became depressed as my career progressed in that world because career advancement meant walking away from the soul of athletics (the players and coaches) and running towards an emotionless bucket named ticket sales.

So in 2013, I quit my career in sports and dived head-first into teaching myself how to code. Most of my friends looked at me like I was nuts, especially the ones with engineering backgrounds. And they were right — it was nuts but I knew I couldn’t spend the rest of my life caring about how many band members we could take to a bowl game and what their hotel accommodations were going to be.

Sorry, I digress.

I left Seattle and moved back into my parent’s home as a 29-year-old with eight weeks of a coding boot camp under my feet. My first engineering gig was an internship for $20/hour where I spent most of that money on my 2-hour roundtrip commute. But it was worth it because I was hungry and it got my feet in the door. After a few more gigs, I landed at GOAT 🐐, where I was one of the first 15 engineers. And those were my most formative years as an engineer. We coded as fast and furiously as we could and grew to 140+ engineers and 30x’d our valuation (from $100m to $3+ billion) by the time I left.

Why “Pixel Pushers?”

Well, because sometimes tech industry professionals take themselves/ourselves too seriously and we need to be made fun of! It’s as simple as that.

I also think it would look incredible on merch so be on the lookout for that 👀.


“I have an app idea — where do I start?”

While I may not be the one to build your app, I can certainly help you navigate the path from concept to launch efficiently. Please book a free 30-minute discovery session below. In our session, we’ll discuss your vision, scope, and platform:

  • I’ll take the time to understand what you want to create (rest assured, I have my own projects in mind, so your idea is safe with me).

  • I’ll provide actionable advice on critical components you should focus on.

  • Or if you’re a non-technical founder working with an outsourced development team and need a second set of eyes, we can devise a plan together on how I can assist you.

Book a 30 minute session

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Tech-adjacent stories from a seven-time startup veteran.

People

Former sports industry professional. Former early employee @goat. Now making indie apps & writing about them here. I also post photos of Frank 🐶 in the Notes.