Who?I’m a software engineer and entrepreneur focused on modern web technologies and AI.
Here's an ongoing autobiography, which also shares the story of my by-the-bootstraps "unschooling" education: now the subject of a chapter on grit and resilience in the bestselling book Mindshift by Barbara Oakley.
An angel investor once described my core soft skill in the role of founder or early team member 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.
In the past, I coined the term "Startup Cities" as co-founder of StartupCities.org and a startup spinoff, both of which focused on why startups should build cities. I now write about Startup Cities at StartupCities.com
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.
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?"
Have fun exploring!
Click the Start Menu to learn more.
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!
