Writing

  • No Free Ratings

    Banning a digit doesn't kill the cowardice — it relocates it. I banned 7s on my bake ratings, and the middle 6 inherited it. The rule is a lens, not a fix.

    ideas · 2026
  • Every Story Needs an Earned Secret

    STAR-perfect interview answers fail because they're recall, not insight. The two-sentence rule that makes a story memorable: a counterintuitive POV plus the proof only you could have.

    ideas · 2026
  • Retiring Products That Work

    Squarespace had five mobile apps. Three had 4.9-star ratings. I retired all of them. The retirements worth getting right kill the seam, not the product.

    building · 2026
  • Reverse-Engineering Google Flights

    Every legitimate path to flight pricing data was too expensive, too unreliable, or dead. So I reverse-engineered Google Flights' undocumented API and built swoop, an open-source Python library for programmatic airfare data.

    building · 2026
  • Open Hours: An Exercise in Building and Learning Quickly

    Building an app for spontaneous phone calls with friends, and what we learned about network effects.

    experiments · 2020
  • pee(k)

    An IoT device concept that analyzes urine for health indicators, targeting adult children caring for elderly parents.

    ideas · 2020
  • on Universe

    A detailed product analysis of Universe, a mobile app for creating websites.

    analysis · 2020
  • the splitty chronicles

    Building an AI-powered receipt scanning app for splitting bills with friends.

    experiments · 2020