Husband, dad, Orthodox Christian, reluctant technologist. I make software for a living, food for fun, furniture for humility, and spend an exorbitant amount of time trying to figure out what it means to be human.
I've been shipping software since 1999 — back when the internet still made dial-up noises and websites had visitor counters. I'm a generalist by necessity and by temperament, happiest where business, design, and code overlap, and a little restless when they don't.
The greatest hits, roughly reverse-chronological. There's plenty I've left out — consider this the abridged paperback edition.
With Jeffrey Golby, building the next major giving and common grant application platform for the Canadian philanthropic sector. The bet: most charitable funding is decided over coffee, and the technology around it should make those conversations better — not replace them. More at wellfunded.io.
Started in 2012 while we were running our bakery. I needed software that didn't exist, so I built it, and in 2013 started offering it to other food businesses. A decade later it's still humming along, helping bakeries, caterers, and restaurants stop guessing what their products actually cost. recipecostcalculator.net.
Carly and I co-founded Kitchening & Co. and grew it over ten years before handing the keys to our extraordinary production manager. I learned more about operations, hiring, and humility in a hot kitchen than I ever did in front of a keyboard.
Was the first software engineer hired to build Charitable Impact. Worked closely with the founder and product team and built the accounting system, tax receipting, compliance reporting, and almost all back-end infrastructure. The platform has since receipted over $1.6 billion in donations from more than 200,000 Canadians, which still makes me a little misty.
The list of software I shipped in my first decade is long enough that I genuinely can't remember most of it. Bits and pieces in education, tourism, gambling 🫣, finance, charity, manufacturing, aircraft scheduling, other scheduling, and accounting. Most of it was built for very tight, specific audiences — a handful of people in a back office somewhere — and that was always the point. The kind of honest software that quietly keeps something running, takes a frustration off someone's plate, and gives them back a few minutes to spend with their family.
A non-exhaustive list, in no particular order — the parts of life that keep the keyboard parts honest.
Orthodox faith, Church Fathers, Theosis, buying more books than I can read, falling in love with the ones I do.
Projects I dream about but usually fail to start. My shop is a mess. My tool collection, embarrassingly large.
Not nearly as much as I'd like, or for as many people as I'd love to host. French peasant fare and German meat and carbs are where it's at. My wife also makes a mean sourdough.
Listening to it on repeat. My desk is beside my bass and acoustic guitar that I keep telling myself I'll re-learn to play one day — but here we are, more than 20 years later, and they just sit there.
Mostly Americanos but unpretentious. Light-roasted beans are gross. The espresso machine in the kitchen does turn some heads.
Watching my kids grow up. Loving my wife well. Striving to be the best dad and husband I can, not always succeeding. Why do we fall? So we can learn to pick ourselves up.
I don't do social media. If you want to chat, share an interest, or have a problem you're wondering about solving together — please reach out.
