Blog
Thoughts on product, engineering, and the things I'm building.
The Valley of Death Is a Production Problem
A few years ago I shut down a product its first users loved. It was an internal venture I owned end to end — a microlearning product, small team, around sixty discovery interviews behind it. People who tried it wanted it; the demand was measured and real. And I [folded it back into the company's portfolio](/decisions/mindlantic) instead of spinning it out, because the thing that made it good couldn't be produced at scale. The quality came from two people distilling decades of hard-won experience…
Moats in the Age of AI
Last year, we shipped a new scheduling feature for a veterinary practice management system. One-page appointment creation. Intelligent slot suggestions based on practitioner availability and appointment type. <200ms load time. By every standard we thought mattered, it was better than what existed. Users who tried it agreed. They said it was faster, cleaner, easier to understand. And then they went back to the old app. They waited 20 seconds for it to load. They clicked through three screens to…
Biggest Challenges in Fawn Rescue
It's 9 PM, the phone rings. A farmer wants to mow tomorrow — five fields, no coordinates, "the meadow behind the inn, left along the dirt road." I've already spent eight hours at the office today, was out in the field at 4 AM, and now I need to put together a team for tomorrow morning. I've lived through this exact scenario countless times over the past few years. Welcome to fawn rescue. There are many challenges in this volunteer work — from recruiting volunteers to insurance obligations and…
Why I'm Building Scout
Scout was born from a simple observation: fawn rescue needs better tools. Every year, one hundred thousand fawns are killed during mowing season in Germany. Many dedicated rescuers want to change that. Often, paper maps, WhatsApp groups, or Excel spreadsheets are used to coordinate, plan, and execute rescue missions. The result: extreme workload and stress on top of the sleep deprivation that comes from carrying fawns out of meadows every morning at 4 AM. Scout is meant to help. - Easy to use,…