I have two speeds.
There's the version of me that thrives on people. I will stay at a dinner until midnight because the conversation got interesting, introduce two strangers who clearly need to know each other, show up to a meetup alone and leave with three new ideas and a group chat. Energy from people isn't something I manufacture. It's just there. Always has been.
Then there's the other version. The one who disappears into her room for three days, forgets to check her phone, eats whatever is closest, and surfaces with something built. That version surprised me. I didn't grow up thinking of myself as the person who locks in and codes until 2 a.m. But she showed up, and she's not leaving.
For a long time I thought these two people were in conflict. The technical world rewards focus and depth. The social world rewards presence and range. I kept switching between them and assumed that meant I hadn't figured out my lane.
Turns out the lane is the switch itself.
The work I care about most lives exactly where both modes meet: building things that require real technical depth and a genuine understanding of people. Products, not papers. Shipped, not theorized. I talk to users one day, prototype the next, connect someone to the right investor that evening. The best stuff I've made started because I was in a room listening to a problem, then went home and couldn't stop thinking about it until I'd built something.
Rhythm
I don't work in steady eight-hour days. I never have.
Some days are slow. Nothing sticks, nothing clicks, and forcing it only makes it worse. Then something catches and I ship three things in 48 hours, barely sleeping, not because I'm disciplined but because I genuinely cannot stop.
That pattern only works if the foundation holds. Sleep, training, eating well, keeping the basics tight so the bursts don't burn me out. Interest pulls you in. Habits keep you there. I learned this the hard way during the year I spent building from home, when there was no office to give me structure and no team to pace against. You either build your own scaffolding or you crash. I built it.
Generalist, on purpose
I love diving into a domain I know nothing about and finding the thread that connects it to something buildable. Legislative data one week, dating app retention the next, fundraising tooling after that. This makes me strong at zero-to-one work. It also makes me honestly not great at doing the same thing for the fifteenth time. I've learned to say that upfront rather than pretend otherwise.
At early stages, strict boundaries between PM, designer, and engineer don't make much sense. The most useful person on a small team is the one who talks to users in the morning, sketches a solution at lunch, and pushes working code by evening. The bottleneck at the start is almost never expertise. It's someone willing to own the full loop.
Taste
Most software asks too much of the user and gives too little back.
I want to build products that disappear into your day. You don't admire them. You just notice when they're gone. The best interface is the one you forget you're using.
There's a pattern I keep noticing. The most important product decisions rarely look like engineering decisions. When does something need an app, and when is it better as a WhatsApp flow with the right amount of friction? When do you add steps to create intent, and when do you delete them to create relief? Those choices decide whether something feels like software, or like your day got easier.
The things that worked best in my career were never the ones that followed the playbook perfectly. They were the ones that felt a little weird, a little too human for a business context. People don't remember your drip campaign. They remember the moment someone did something real.
That instinct guides how I build. Small, considered details over feature bloat. Slightly unexpected over safely predictable. Make the user the hero, not the product.
Community
I don't build alone. I never have.
The best work I've done started by introducing two people who should have met sooner. Ideas move through people, not pitch decks. The network isn't a growth strategy. It's how you find the problems worth solving and the people worth solving them with.
Building from home taught me this by subtraction. When you lose the spontaneous coffees and the hallway collisions, you feel the absence physically. You can lock in and go deep on your own. But deep work without a city eventually thins out. You need the collisions.
Working with me
A few things worth knowing.
I prefer calls over long threads. Five minutes talking replaces ten messages. If something is urgent, just call. I mean it.
I'm direct and I expect the same. I'd rather have an uncomfortable conversation on Monday than discover the real problem on Friday. Silence isn't harmony. It's delay.
Give me context and goals, then let me run. I don't micromanage and I don't want to be micromanaged. If I'm stuck, I'll say so early. I'd rather ask for help than waste a week pretending I have it figured out.
Moving fast means breaking things sometimes. The only part that matters is owning it, fixing it, and sharing what you learned so nobody repeats it. Mistakes are data. Hiding them is the actual problem.
And: if it's not written down, it's not decided. No agenda, no meeting.
What I believe
"Choose your hard."
"When anyone can build anything, knowing what's worth building becomes the real skill."
"A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked." That's John Gall, and it describes almost every good product I've seen.
"I'm tired of boring SaaS and boring stories." A friend said that. I think about it constantly.