Product-oriented engineering leader. I build software people want.
Based in South Lake Tahoe, CA. I’ve been shipping software for 25+ years. I’m a Y Combinator alum, startup advisor, builder, and (rarely) investor.
- Engineering leadership: building and coaching teams that ship
- Architecture: pragmatic systems that scale without over-engineering
- Product + execution: tight feedback loops, measurable outcomes
- Hard problems: performance, reliability, observability, “this is on fire”
- AfterHour Head of Engineering. Consumer finance social, AI trading, AI product development workflows.
- Brava: VP / Head of Engineering (software). Complex consumer IoT + custom Linux OS; acquired in 2019 by Middleby (
$MIDD). - RealCrowd: Co-founder / CTO. Direct commercial real estate investing marketplace (YC Summer 2013).
- Disney / Playdom: Principal engineer; shipped profitable games and platform tech.
- First principles: start with the real problem, not the default solution
- Serve the customer: build what people want, not what engineers want
- Don’t over-engineer: keep optionality, ship, then iterate
- Ship often: feedback is the engine
- Assume good intentions: fix systems and communication before blame
- Over-communicate: alignment beats heroics
I’m working on AfterHour, doing a little consulting, and investing (including through Pioneer Fund / Orange Fund). I’m also exploring AI (and a bunch of other buzzwords) with a builder’s lens.
- wodbrains — Builds a smart timer from any workout: paste text, drop a screenshot, share a URL, or describe what you want.
- deadhand — Remote command and control for Cursor AI local agents.
- jdconley — This repo: jdconley.com plus build-in-public logs and tooling.
My site publishes real build artifacts (plans + redacted transcripts) so you can inspect the process end-to-end:
Local commits auto-refresh website log artifacts through a Husky pre-commit hook (pnpm run logs:sync:site + staged log outputs). For a one-off bypass, use HUSKY=0 git commit ....
If you’re here for the code and workflows, see DEVELOPING.md.