zach.dev
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Claudem Ipsum
Who?I'm a software engineer and product leader focused on modern web technologies and AI.
An angel investor once described my core soft skill as: "The ability to perceive exactly what needs to be done. And then to do it."
My experience working in difficult environments around the world means that I can be trusted to get things done, even when things go wrong.
This website was built by hand, before AI.
Here's an ongoing autobiography, which shares my story of leaving school in 9th grade to join the workforce: now the subject of a chapter on grit and resilience in the bestselling book Mindshift by Barbara Oakley.
I've won several awards for economic research and have been published or interviewed in Virgin Entrepreneur, a16z's Future.com, The Atlantic's CityLab, Foreign Policy, and in academic volumes by Routledge and Palgrave MacMillan.
In a past life, I coined the term "Startup Cities" as co-founder of StartupCities.org in Guatemala City and a startup spinoff, both of which focused on why startups should build cities. This was originally a fringe idea, but has now attracted significant capital and founder interest in the 2020s. I sometimes write about Startup Cities at StartupCities.com
I read and collect obscure memoirs from the history of business and technology. You can find some of them in my public library. Send me your recommendations!
Wait... what is this site?
This is my personal portfolio, inspired by the question: "What would the opposite of the two-color template developer blog look like?"
Click the Start Menu to learn more. Have fun!
Contact:hello @ zach.dev
All Life is Problem Solving
Over time, I've been reminded over and over of the phrase:
"All life is problem solving."
From birth to death, humans spend our entire lives solving problems.
Many of these problems are mundane: ‘I’m hungry.’ ‘Where is it safe to sleep?’
Others are more abstract: ‘How do I solve this equation?’ ‘How do I sell 10,000 widgets?’ ‘How do I cure this disease?’
Philosopher of science Karl Popper wrote “All life is problem solving”. He thought that trial-and-error was behind all problem solving and, really, the growth of all knowledge. He used philosopher-speak and called this process ‘conjecture and refutation’.
We put out a conjecture (guess) and we see if we’re wrong. Then we learn.
New scientific theories and their experiments obviously work this way. But so do new products and new businesses. And new music or art.
Even amoebas solve their problems with trial and error – grasping out for food in the primordial soup. Humans are the same, we just have more complex problems and ways to learn from trial and error.
The grand narrative of evolution is all about problem solving. It’s trial and error, all the way down.
I love this view. ‘All life is problem solving’ has a spiritual quality to me.
If it’s true that the growth of knowledge always requires conjecture and refutation, then a life of adventure, learning, and entrepreneurship is aligned with some deep aspect of the world.
The challenge of life is to make bold conjectures in the world and to learn if they fail.
All life is problem solving. So let’s solve problems!
