About this site

I’ve mostly removed myself from social media, but I miss the conversations that used to happen there. The ones that inspired, that sparked my interests. It’s hard to remember, but social media was once a place I could belong to. Nowadays, it feels pretty unwelcome.

I’m a person that is constantly thinking, writing and building things. Too much of that work lives in my head, and on my hard drive. This site is my attempt to create my own space, away from social media, to share some of that work. I don’t have an agenda, but I hope some of my work speaks to you in some way.

You can get in touch with me via email: loading....

Recent Projects

Last year I built a wood-fired sauna in Mount Hood National Forest. This is a detailed journal I made about its construction.

I’ve always got a bunch of side projects bubbling. Some recent ones include a used EV price tracker (and a CarPlay voice assistant that helps you find a nearby charger), an open source Instapaper client for Kindle and Kobo ereaders (and a virtual Kobo page turner that uses your Apple Watch).

Ride Report

Ride Report - Ride Report is a software platform that helps cities launch and evaluate bike, scooter and car sharing programs. It was my second company, started with Evan Heidtmann and acquired by Inrix. It was born from my passion for urban transportation systems, and I worked hard to grow it according to my values. I’m especially proud of our Employee Handbook.

Past Products

I’ve long been interested in technology that fades into the background – putting the focus back on people, where it belongs. This took me deep into sensor processing, machine learning, and low-power wireless technology. Several products came out of this focus.

Ride App

Ride App was the first iteration of the Ride Report business. We built an app that ran in the background in a low power state, and could automatically determine when you hopped on your bike. It had all kinds of fun and wacky awards and trophies – for multi-day “ride streaks”, in a hail storm, around the moon (via daily commutes). The app also let you give simple, one-tap feedback to your city. We used this data to build cities a crowd-sourced “stress map” which showed where people were biking and which streets were leading to a lot of negative experiences.

The app had a loyal following but the business behind it was a real struggle. Ultimately, we wound down the app-related business to focus on our Ride Report product. We open sourced the app, and allowed other ride-logging apps to leverage our automatic ride detection models.

Knock

Knock was a simple, fun app that let you unlock your Mac by simply knocking twice on your iPhone when you are nearby your Mac. No password, no tapping an app – you didn’t even need to take your phone out of your pocket! At the time it felt so futuristic it bordered on magic. As a result, when it launched in 2013 it quickly climbed to the #1 paid app on the App Store with over 200,000 paid users. Knock was also my first company, launched with Jon Schlossberg.

Square Wallet

At Square, I was tasked with launching our first foray into consumer payments. I came up with the idea of building a virtual “tab” (think bar tabs and old fashioned grocery stores) that opened when you were inside a trusted business. This all happened seamlessly in the background, so that you could pay at your favorite coffee shop simply by walking up and giving your name. This vision became Square Wallet, a team I started and led until I left Square in 2013. The product later failed (Alex Johnson has a good post-mortem for the curious), but it remains one of my favorite products I’ve built.