I find technologies that matter early and build the ecosystems that carry them to scale. I’ve been doing it for thirty years. The pattern is always the same: great technology is necessary but never sufficient. What makes it last is the teams, cultures, and communities you build around it.
Career
I joined MongoDB as employee #24 and Chief Developer Advocate, architecting its developer experience, orchestrating safe writes by default across all drivers, and scaling developer relations from 1 to 125+ to earn back-to-back DB-Engines Database of the Year awards (2013, 2014). At Docker, I served as Chief Operator and VP of Engineering during hyper-growth, leading core engine engineering and helping establish the open container standards (OCI, CNCF) the industry now runs on. At Google, I led Go as it grew from 400,000 developers to 4.5 million, co-architected Go Modules with Russ Cox, co-founded Google’s Open Source Strategy team, and authored Google’s official Code of Conduct across 5,000+ open source projects. At Two Sigma, as Managing Director: Head of Product Management, I directed product strategy across a $65B AUM hedge fund, architecting unified AI/ML platforms that cut model ideation-to-trading time by 50%.
Today I’m independent again. I steward my open source projects, write, advise, and am building a new venture. More on that soon.
Open Source
I love to code. I created Hugo, Cobra, and Viper. Together, my personal open source projects have earned 200,000+ GitHub stars and a place among the most-adopted engineers on GitHub. Hugo powers this site.
I’m a GitHub Star and a Google Developer Expert.
Created:
- Hugo, 89k+ ★. #1 static site engine, powering vote.gov, kubernetes.io, brave.com, freebsd.org, kde.org
- Cobra, 44k+ ★. #1 CLI framework for Go, used by 150k+ applications including the GitHub CLI, Kubernetes, Docker, and Dropbox
- Viper, 30k+ ★. Go’s configuration framework, used by 100k+ libraries and applications
- spf13-vim, 16k ★. The most popular Vim distribution for over a decade
Led:
- Go, 135k+ ★. Product lead for language and ecosystem (400k → 4.5M developers); co-architected Go modules; co-founded Google OSS Strategy team
- Docker / Moby, 71k ★. Chief Operator / VP of Engineering; open container standards (OCI & CNCF)
- MongoDB, 28k+ ★. Chief Developer Advocate (Employee #24); aggregation framework, driver UX across 12+ languages, safe writes by default
- Drupal. Board of Directors (2012–2014); #3 most-used web engine, 100,000+ contributors
Advisory & Investing
I advise high-growth technology companies, venture firms, and open-source foundations on product strategy, developer go-to-market, and organizational scale.
Board & Advisory:
- Drupal Association — Board of Directors (2012–2014)
- Scala Center at EPFL — Advisory Board Member (2016–2018)
- Docker — Technical Advisor
- CoreOS — Technical Advisor (acquired by Red Hat)
- Chili Piper — Strategic Advisor
- Rhone Apparel — Advisor
- Reality Crisis / Skatrix — Advisor & Investor
- Broadway Video Ventures — Strategic Advisor
- Onboard Informatics — Technical Advisor
- wRank Inc — Board Member
Select Investments:
- Breeze Airways, Docker, MongoDB, Chili Piper, Rhone Apparel, Reality Crisis / Skatrix, wRank Inc.
Speaking & Writing
I’ve keynoted 40+ international conferences, including Google Next, LinuxCon, and OSCON, and organized 30+ more, including GopherCon, DockerCon, and MongoDB Days. My two best talks are Go: On the Shoulders of Giants and Drupal and the Secret of My Success. If you’d like me to speak at your event, contact me.
I wrote MongoDB and PHP and co-authored the Bad Data Handbook for O’Reilly. I also contributed to or advised on Powerful Command-Line Applications in Go, Hugo in Action, Go in Action, and Learning Go.
If that interests you, subscribe to Signal vs. Nil, my newsletter.
Life
My biggest passion is my family. I’m the proud father of four and uncle to 23 nieces and nephews. I also founded and built a 150+ player youth soccer league for 3rd–8th graders in my community.
We love to travel. In 2018 we spent an entire summer crossing Europe as a family of six: 20 countries, 40 cities, 8 weeks, and a couple of terabytes of photos and video. We’re an outdoor family in every season, hiking, camping, paddling, boating, sledding, snowboarding.
I photograph all of it. Sony, if you’re wondering.
Music is the spice of life. I’ll listen to almost anything, but punk and ska have my heart.
And I’m a skateboarder. I’ve been skating most of my life, and while age has taken a few tricks, it hasn’t taken the ride. Skate culture is a huge part of who I am—I’m an advisor and investor in an augmented reality skateboarding venture alongside skateboarding legends Rodney Mullen, Daewon Song, and Chris Haslam. Look for the helmet with the Go stickers on it.
CV
My full CV is available here. PDF on request.