About

CEO, Simple Labs

I enjoy exploring the fringes of technology and learning how the bleeding edge works. I believe this process of exploring is where truly innovative business ideas are born. By breaking things down to their ‘binary’ parts, you can easily identify the bottlenecks of various systems and build simple solutions to these hurdles. Since these problems are at such a fundamental level, innovations here tend to have wide ranging implications. The universe is full of things I don’t really understand, and I don’t like that particularly. I’m on a quest to learn all these things for myself. Connect all the dots, figure out what the heck we’re doing here on earth.
UX Design

I’m fascinated by consumer behavior and the psychology behind why people do what they do. This seems to show up time and time again in designing user interfaces. Once you understand your users, you can build a system that engineers specific behaviors. Doing this seamlessly is good design. Achieving true simplicity in design is much more than having a cool visual design or having a unique interface. Simple design encompasses the entire user experience and engineers specific behaviors. Great design is transparent – users will enjoy your product because it successfully solves a problem.
Hacker

While learning how things work, you also gain insight on how to manipulate those same systems. Hacking is basically manipulating systems in ways they weren’t intended to be used, in order to gain some advantage. I began playing around online at 14 /15, running various affiliate marketing campaigns, making websites, bots, and scripts. Slowly, I began turning these underground skills into white-hat businesses. There are many valuable skills to be learned ‘on the darkside’ – namely social engineering, dark patterns, campaign logistics, outsourcing, and most importantly getting burned by other, smarter hackers. Learning & implementing these skills as a foundation were extremely valuable and allow me to navigate the internet fluently and confidently.
Building the Future

While startups are cool, my thoughts lie in the future. I want to build the future, and I’m starting right now. Every day is a race to get incrementally better, smarter, and learn more. Right now I’m interested in: 3d printers, cnc machines, quadcopters, bitcoin, arduino + sensors, raspberry pi, in-vitro meat, molecular assemblers, practical immortality, and anything else that sounds weird. On a more esoteric note, the human race is quickly approaching a very interesting point of exponential technological growth. I’m extremely interested in the transhumanism movement and will contribute all I can to help the human race transition from a type 0 to type 1 civilization. Symbiosis of man and machine. Boom! Bring on the future!