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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
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zach.dev // Now With More Neon

A Redesign Inspired by Cyberpunk and Vaporwave

new zach.dev tweet

A few months ago I asked myself, "What would the opposite of the two-color developer blog look like?"

You've seen it. It's a static site generated by Gatsby or Hugo. It has a white background, a link to Github, and a low-resolution profile picture.

My old website fit the stereotype: old zach dev screenshot

Here's an attempt at designing the opposite of the stereotypical developer blog.

It features:

  • tons of neon
  • a vaporwave soundtrack
  • a Roman solider who I'm pretty sure is taking a selfie (a real statue in Modena, Italy)
  • cyberpunk clouds
  • a built-from-scratch Windows 95 navigation experience
  • a totally trippy floating monolith because there still wasnt enough neon

I built it in collaboration with Felipe Lebrun. Check out his design work.

Just about everything was built from scratch in React.

Hope you enjoy the A E S T H E T I C

Nov 28 2019
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