I'm a builder and a moralist who cares about fundamental ideas, especially individualism.
Currently, I am building Akston — a workbench for serious writers, empowered by AI — with my co-founders, Jonathon Brajdic and Marek Michulka. I am also writing about how an inspiring, happy future filled with the best sci-fi technology requires political freedom. When I'm not doing that, you can find me reading, flying my paraglider, training jiu-jitsu, or losing games of StarCraft II.
You can see my interests are fairly eclectic. As a kid, I was interested in philosophical questions, but outwardly I was a STEM type. I wrote my first code when I realized that my StarCraft: Brood War clan needed a website. When I thought I wanted to be a doctor, I shadowed a neurosurgeon in the operating room a few days a week. When I saw what the Affordable Care Act was beginning to do to the medical profession, I started obsessively studying political philosophy and, when I finished college, I thought I would start a career as a writer.
I took a writing job at a startup news company, which quickly died, but the pace and stakes of early stage companies was irresistible intriguing. After that, I worked at a startup and even co-founded one of my own (which went through YC's S19 batch, but later failed) — entrepreneurship has become a central part of how I think of my own productiveness.
After that, I tried taking my tech expertise to build a Growth Team at the Ayn Rand Institute. Back in college, I stumbled across Ayn Rand's work, which changed everything. If you've never read and understood Rand, consider doing so immediately — her ideas are the best lessons I've ever learned. A decade later, I think of Rand as a world-historic thinker — an epochal genius who formulated the philosophy proper to the industrial, enlightened, technological, spacefaring human being. Today’s thinkers won’t recognize her achievement, but that's par for the course. In a few hundred years, they’ll be forgotten and she’ll be justly recognized.
Though I am now working on my own building and writing projects, I remain deeply invested in the values Ayn Rand advocates. I hope that what I build and write persuades you to to embrace, as she put it, the best within you. I love seeing ambitious, free people do amazing things. I try to watch every evening rocket launch from Vandenberg as they streak across the SoCal sky. I evangelize my favorite tools to my everyone who will listen — I want to see what people will make. I deeply love my favorite art and hope someone is out there crafting beautiful things that will enliven my soul, and yours, too. While my tools are crafted with code, and my writing subjects focus on technology and politics, I hope you'll notice that the theme of all of it is something closer to the heart.
I love human creativity and adventure, and I want to build a world where I get to see more and more of it. Alongside my lovely and brilliant girlfriend, Michelle Hung—who spends her days doing incredible work advancing energy freedom (and much more)—I’ve also been building a community of people who share these values. We occasionally host conferences and invite people who inspire us to exchange ideas.
I invite you to scroll around and explore my ideas, projects and hobbies. If you like me, please do reach out. I hope to hear from you.
