Collection

Builders worth knowing

Founders, operators and engineers with something running.

This is the widest group on the site, on purpose. It holds people running companies you have heard of and people running something out of a spare hour on Sunday, and what puts them on the same page is that each of them has a thing that exists rather than a thing they are planning.

Most of them have a day job and a second life. The second life is usually why they are here.

The builders

30 profiled so far, newest first.

• Paul Giovannini Made a chess game without being a chess player, and sold 200,000 copies of it in two weeks Paul Giovannini shipped two games that sold under 700 copies between them, worked out exactly why, and then sold 200,000 copies of the third in a fortnight France
• Vivek Aithal Sells software that reads data for you, still reads it himself for fun Vivek Aithal runs a company teaching machines to do data analysis, and spends his weekends doing data analysis by hand because he enjoys it San Francisco
• Gaurav Sharma Put music in a hundred million hands, now handing over the controls Gaurav Sharma helped get music to a hundred million people, then decided pressing play was not nearly enough for them New York
• Aditya Agarwal Built the obvious things, now funds the unformed ones Aditya Agarwal had one of the most legible careers in tech, and now backs people at the stage where nothing is legible yet San Francisco
• Gary Vaynerchuk Loud in the micro, patient in the macro Gary Vaynerchuk is the loudest man in business advice, and the strategy underneath it is patience
• Greg Isenberg CEO of Late Checkout, host of The Startup Ideas Podcast Greg Isenberg has given away more than two thousand startup ideas and built his company on the part nobody can copy San Francisco
• Karthik Founder of Daydream Karthik is building an iOS app to teach a practice that predates the iPhone by a few thousand years
• Nadya Okamoto Co-founder and CMO of Pie, co-founder of August Nadya Okamoto built an audience of five million online, then took a job getting people off their phones New York
• Rand Fishkin Co-founder and CEO, SparkToro. Co-founder of Moz. Rand Fishkin taught a generation to chase Google clicks, and his new book is about how the clicks stopped coming Seattle
• Rob Hoffman Co-founder and CEO, Contact Studios Rob Hoffman set out to be a writer, became a million-dollar closer instead, and built an agency that needs him to be both
• Abhinav Asthana Co-founder and CEO, Postman Abhinav Asthana built a browser side project during an internship, and 33 million developers still open it every day San Francisco
• Akash Mukherjee Data and AI product by day, side quests by night Akash Mukherjee has a big-tech resume and hustles over the weekends with fun, unique & opinionated side quests and passion projects New York
• Alex Lieberman Co-founder of Morning Brew, Founder and CEO of Tenex Alex Lieberman sold a $75 million media company and started over with no outside money, and his bio still puts girl dad first New York
• Brendan Hardware engineer, Build With Brendan Brendan builds portals in his workshop and numbers them, out loud, until Disney notices
• Chase Engelbrecht Co-founder and CTO, Codemoji Chase Engelbrecht taught himself to code, then built the platform that spares kids the hard way Chicago
• David Heinemeier Hansson Creator of Ruby on Rails, CTO of 37signals DHH has spent twenty years proving the software industry wrong, with a Le Mans class win on the side Copenhagen
• Ian Mitchell Founder, The Knoble Ian Mitchell fights human trafficking with bank data, rival banks, and a guitar Chattanooga, Tennessee
• Jonathan Graham Founder, Daily Courage Jonathan Graham walked away from a $583,000 job to teach people how to do scary things Mexico City
• Kamal Kannan Founder, Sanklad Digital Kamal Kannan is running a public experiment: can one person with AI do the work of ten? London
• Livio Bolzon Co-founder, Codemoji Livio Bolzon looked at a six-year-old, looked at JavaScript, and decided emojis were the missing link Chicago
• Mark Pincus Founder, Zynga Mark Pincus failed in public for a decade, then invented the games your mom plays San Francisco
• Milly Tamati Founder, Generalist World Milly Tamati built a global home for career misfits from an island with 170 neighbors A remote Scottish island
• Mirza Beširović Director of Product, AI Agents at Zendesk Mirza Beširović was a translator first, which turns out to be the entire job Berlin
• Sachin Kamath Co-founder and CEO, Neolemon Sachin Kamath left rockets and P&G to put a cartoon studio in your pocket Faro, Portugal
• Shruti Gandhi General Partner, Array Ventures Shruti Gandhi writes the first check, teaches the CS class, and still files herself under engineer San Francisco
• Tobi Lütke Founder and CEO, Shopify Tobi Lütke runs a public company by day and ships open source at night, and the open source has 21,000 stars Canada
• Tushar Madan Co-founder, Avianna Tushar Madan went from measuring pitchers to measuring whether AI agents can be trusted
• Wassim Khouas Backend builder and co-builder, GitFut Wassim Khouas leads 70 developers, ships edtech, and still had time to rate your GitHub like a footballer Algiers
• Younes Ferradji Full stack developer and builder, GitFut Younes Ferradji turned GitHub clout into football cards and broke the developer internet for a week Algeria
• Zara Zhang AI tinkerer, opinionated software as storytelling Zara Zhang builds tiny products that feel like essays you can click San Jose