For four months, I've been building this business — websites and digital products for people. And in that time, I haven't really spoken about my work.
Not on video. Not on LinkedIn. Not in any of the ways somebody who doesn't already know me could find me.
The one thing that would have moved it more than anything else is the easiest possible thing. Turn on a camera. Look into it. Say — hi, my name's David. I build websites and digital products for people. Talk to me if you want one.
I just didn't do it. And that, it turns out, is kind of a pattern — one I'm starting to see everywhere I look.
For most of the last decade I've been working in the shadows. Not in the sense that I haven't been working — I've been working constantly. CrewLAB, Breasy, installation art at festivals, music, and now OhDavid. The work has been there. What hasn't been there is me, in front of it.
Three shadows
The startups. With CrewLAB and Breasy I rarely talked about what I was doing — not on LinkedIn, not on a podcast, not really anywhere. The work was great. We raised money, we scaled, we built tools that people actually used. But the public story was always "This is the project. David's involved." Never "This is David. Here's what he's making."
The creative work. Music, installation art, all the things I've been making outside professional software. Some of it is on streaming. Some of it is at festivals, in the desert, in installation spaces. All of it is easier for me to make than to talk about. As if the making itself wasn't enough — as if I needed permission to say it existed.
OhDavid. This is the one that makes me laugh, in a not-quite-laughing way. I've spent four months building this business — perfecting the website, refining the offers, redoing the pricing twice — and months of backend legwork to make things legit. Quote unquote.
And in those four months, the easiest possible thing — turning on a camera, looking into it, and saying "Hi, my name's David. I build websites and digital products for people. Talk to me if you want one" — I just didn't do.
I posted blog posts nobody knew where to find. I made quote cards on Instagram. I built a /shop. I redid the /about page three times. The whole time, the one thing that would have made the biggest difference was sitting right there, not getting done.
That's the pattern. Build something. Hide behind it.
What was actually in the way
Three things, and none of them are particularly novel. But all of them are mine.
There's a deeper thing under them, one I've only started to see recently. Nobody's ever really asked me what David thinks. It's always been what CrewLAB thinks, what Breasy thinks, what the choir needs, what the rowing team wants, what the org is doing. There's never been a channel where the question was — David, what do you want to talk about? What do you actually think? And if that question doesn't get asked of you for long enough, you kind of stop asking it of yourself.
Not that I couldn't. More that I didn't feel like I could, or wanted to — because staying inside somebody else's structure meant I never really had to figure out what I thought.
Ownership. This is the one I didn't see for a long time. At CrewLAB and Breasy I was always part of a team — that kind of team-before-self mentality, what's good for the org, don't make it about you. That instinct made me good at startups, and it also made me genuinely uncomfortable claiming any of the work as my own. We built that. The team shipped that. Even when I was the one writing the code, designing the workflow, making the call — the "we" was true, but it wasn't the whole truth.
I think sharing what I'm working on, in my own voice, actually helps the team. There's a reason people like to work with people.
The professionalism error. Ingrained in me since I was very young. There's a right way and a wrong way to do things, and either it meets some external standard or it's not worth showing. Especially around music. Especially around art. Anything I made got measured against what the professional version would look like, and if the gap was big, the thing just didn't get shared.
It's a useful instinct, and it's also the thing that's been keeping me from letting anything out into the world.
The masks. Music creator mask when I'm around music. Business mask when I'm around business. Tech mask when I'm around tech. Relationship masks for relationships. I've spent a decade editing myself depending on who's in the room.
I'm 31 years old. I'm tired of editing myself.
Why now
I feel confident when I'm doing — that's most of it. The doing has been there for a long time. What's new is that I'm actually willing to talk about it.
A friend who introduces me to people said something a while back that stuck. "You should start saying you help people's dreams come true." I winced when I first heard it. Then I tried it. Then I realized he was right.
That's the work. I listen to what someone is trying to make, I figure out what's actually in the way, and I help them get there. Sometimes it's a website. Sometimes it's a system. Sometimes it's just a conversation. Whatever role is going to be supportive, I'll play that role.
And this is the part that finally got me to turn on the camera — if it's not for you, that's fine. You can fucking turn it off, go do your own thing. There are plenty of voices out there, and mine doesn't need to sound like anyone else's.
What I'm not
Before I get to what I am, let me name the things I'm not — because I've been around all of them long enough to know I'm not going to become any of them, and saying so out loud helps.
I'm not hustle porn. I'm not here to tell you to 10X your life, or that if you're not building at 5am you're losing — a lot of that is shitty, and I'm not trying to add to it.
I'm not unfounded hope, either. I'm not going to tell you the tool is going to save you. The tool is a tool. You're the one doing the work.
I'm not a tech utopian. I don't think AI is going to solve all of our problems — I think AI is going to solve some of our problems and create a whole different set of new ones, same as every technology has. I don't think flying to Mars changes anything that matters. I don't think computers fixed anything fundamental. I don't think we're one product launch away from being a different species.
And I'm not a tech doomer either. I don't think any of this is the evil virus of Satan. The middle path is real, and most of what's interesting is in the middle.
If you want to get to a particular outcome, this is how you do it. That's how I want to frame things.
What I am
I'm an anarcho DIY punk rock kid who makes big art in the desert, weird electronic music, and encourages people to own their own tech.
I think you should go do it yourself if you have the resources. It's probably not the best use of your time, and it's going to be hard, but if you want to — I'm not going to talk you out of it. I'll at least point you in the right direction.
I think the biggest moment of success is watching someone's eyes light up at a possibility they hadn't seen before. The possibility of getting in shape. The possibility of making a new friend. The possibility of trying something new. The possibility of doubling down on something old. You can find a spark in a grain of sand or in a galaxy far away — that's the Creative Spark, and that's what I'm here for.
I'm here as a friend, as a sounding board, as a resource, as a partner, as a guide — whatever role is going to be supportive, I'll play that role.
It's my dharma. A path of service. That's what sustains me.
What's coming
Over the next three to six months, this is what to expect.
I'm going to document the journey — what I'm building, why I'm building it that way, what I'm using, what's working, and what isn't.
I'm going to talk about DIY technology, and the tradeoffs between buying something pre-built, building your own, partnering with somebody, or doing it yourself. There's a time and a place for each one, and I'll be talking about that quite a bit.
I'm going to tear things down. Software platforms I like and platforms I don't — with reasons. State-of-the-world pieces on how a category got to where it is. Explainers on the things that look boring on the surface but actually matter underneath — payment processing, service-business ops, software pricing, how Squarespace ate the small-business web.
I'm only going to talk about things I'm good at. And if I do talk about something I'm not good at, I'll tell you so — take that material with a grain of salt and seek other resources.
And I'm going to do all of this grounded in the present. I have a lot to say about the past, and I have a lot of opinions about the future, but the work is here, in the present. The yoga of doing. That's the practice.
One more thing
I'm not figuring this out perfectly — full disclosure. I expect to write things I look back on and wince at. I expect to record videos that don't land. I expect the first month of this to be uneven.
What I expect even more is to keep going. To have a deeper understanding of what I'm doing six months from now than I do today. To be moving in the right direction.
If you want a companion for that — somebody to grapple with this stuff alongside — I'm here.
If not, you can fucking turn it off. That's fine too.
Finding my voice isn't something I've done. It's something I'm doing.
I'd like you to be here for it.
— David
