2026
A race across twelve zodiac Titans. Book three.
The big reveal at the end. *Chef's kiss*
Long shots17 companies and 3 novels
Companies I started, joined early, or ran.
Also, novels I wrote.
- Mail Shoppe 2007–2008, Shut Down
- InTicketing 2008–2009, Parted Ways
- Eventbrite 2009–2013, IPO
- Air Bulgarian 2010–2011, Shut Down
- Meme Defense 2012–2013, Shut Down
- Rentify 2013–2014, Parted Ways
- Shortcut 2014–2015, Shut Down
- 17hats 2015–2016, Parted Ways
- Casting Call Club 2015–now, Active
- CastHappy 2016–2017, Shut Down
- Fortuna 2016–2017, Shut Down
- Superscribers 2016–2017, Shut Down
- Reforge 2017–2021, Acquired
- Closing Credits 2021–now, Active
- Neoniva 2022–2023, Shut Down
- Shosay 2024–now, Active
- Videomancy 2024–2025, Shut Down
- The Zombie Apocalypse first half of 2025, Novel
- Royale second half of 2025, Novel
- First Past the Post first half of 2026, Novel
20072012201720222026
- IPO & acquired · 2
- Active · 3
- Parted ways · 3
- Shut down · 9
- Novels · 3
Currently working on
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2015
Casting Call Club
Community and marketplace for creators: voice actors, producers, directors, audio engineers. Where a project finds its cast.
2 million users
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2021
Closing Credits
Education and community for the same people. Courses, cohorts, live sessions and certificates, taught by people who actually do the work.
Sister to CCC
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2024
Shosay
SHO what people SAY about you. Collect testimonials as video, audio or text, keep the good ones, and embed them anywhere.
Newest company
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2026
Sol Truckers, Book 1
Yury is from Earth, which is currently missing. He finds himself in a videogame version of the Sol System caught up in interplanetary war. If he wants to see home again, he must find a way to stop the war, with the help of a misfit group of truckers.
Being written
Disposition
20 entries · 17 companies, 3 novels
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2025
A political death match inside a space habitat. Book two.
First time using two editors on one book.
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2025
Medieval fantasy zombie survival. Book one of Nouscraft.
The trilogy has sold over 10,000 copies, averaging 4.5 stars on Amazon/Goodreads.
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2024
SHO what people SAY about you. Social proof for people who have earned some.
Started Oct 2024. Collecting, moderating and embedding testimonials for creators.
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2024
Create videos with 1-click
1000s of videos created. Never found a market position.
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2022
Contest hosting website
$15k in the first month but quickly fell to 0 when I stopped propping it up with CCC
-
2021
Education and Community for creators
Launched in Aug 2021. Hitting ~50k MRR as of Jan 2022.
-
2017
What LinkedIn should have been.
I was the founding engineer and Head of Engineering. Went from $0 to 9-figures. I left after 4+ years for a break and tinker with side projects. Acquired later on.
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2016
Podcast management
Never got anywhere with it
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2016
Automated Social Media Management
Never got anywhere with it
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2016
CRM for Freelancers
Never got anywhere with it
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2015
CRM for SMBs, specifically photographers
I was the CTO. Growth stalled.
-
2015
LinkedIn (community & marketplace) for creators.
2 million users.
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2014
DoorDash for large venues. Delivery to your seat. I was the cofounder and CTO
Raised about $1M but could not find the right business model
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2013
Landlord CRM
I was the CTO. Things were fine but I wanted to start Shortcut.
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2012
Tower Defense Game featuring your favorite internet memes.
I was trolled by an internet mob and didn't get funded.
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2010
iOS App to help you learn Bulgarian
Launched it free in the App Store. Lost interest after a while.
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2009
Events made easy. I was the 10th employee.
Spent 4 years there. Fell in love with startups. Went from $4M to $700M.
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2008
Events made easy, but not as easy as Eventbrite. Acquired later on.
I was just an engineer here. My first job in the SF Bay. I am very grateful for my start here.
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2007
A wanna be Etsy. My first startup ever. I was the founding engineer.
Didn't even launch a decent product.
Written by hand
I don't use AI to write.
Putting a thing on paper (neovim) sentence by sentence, word by word, does something to your brain. It is the work of thinking, of brain exercise. If you outsource thinking and you keep the result, you slowly lose the part that made you able to produce it. I think humans have to keep doing it manually to be able to have deep thoughts at all.
That said, coding is different, and I use AI for most of it. I spent twenty-five years writing code by hand so I feel like I've earned it. I mean sure, there's an art there when buildig out code, but I'm interested in the product and the people. I still review all the code the AI writes though. Can't trust Skynet.