Home

Writing

Things I've written

Thoughts on engineering, product, and whatever else I'm thinking about. Organized by theme, newest first within each group.

Company Spotlights

Things I admire about companies I'm excited about — and what I'd change.

01

Building a Tiny Identity Graph to Understand a Big One

Prepping to interview at Semcasting, a data-as-a-service identity resolution company, I built a small Python ETL pipeline that does a deterministic matchback - the core of ad attribution - end to end with Snowflake. Here's the concepts and the build, with a video walkthrough.

Data EngineeringIdentity ResolutionPythonCompany Spotlight
5 min read
02

what's this funnel's recovery score?

WHOOP built a beautiful membership page that quietly makes you do too much work to buy. Here's the one conversion experiment I'd run first, with a live A/B demo you can toggle yourself.

GrowthFrontendCompany SpotlightProduct
7 min read
03

what stubs the hub?

StubHub has built a world-class top-of-funnel and a fragile bottom-of-funnel. Here's why the post-purchase experience is where trust is actually won or lost — and what AI could do about it.

AICompany SpotlightSoftware Engineering
4 min read
04

i talked to a stranger on a train and now think about venture capital

A deep dive into Graph Advisors, their Services with Integrated Software model, and what they reveal about how to build something that actually lasts.

VCStartupsFinTechCompany Spotlight
11 min read

Misc

Technical deep-dives, opinions, and everything else.

01

go ahead and ask dad one more time about when he was your age

I designed, built, and shipped a memory journaling app to the App Store by myself - Banyan. Here's what it does, the parts that were way harder than they looked (offline-first sync, real permissions, App Store-compliant account deletion), and what owning the whole thing taught me.

React NativeiOSSolo BuildProduct
5 min read
02

continuous what and continuous who?

I built a full CI/CD pipeline from scratch — GitHub Actions, Docker, k3s, Helm, Trivy, and ArgoCD — to finally understand exactly what happens between 'git push' and 'it's live.'

DevOpsCI/CDSoftware Engineering
9 min read
03

my first go at system design (i now hate elevators 😱)

Three common system design problems — URL shortener, elevator system, and rate limiter — with my raw attempts, honest feedback, and polished answers.

System DesignSoftware Engineering
14 min read