A Community of Builders

This week on Volley we welcomed some exceptional builders who deserve recognition. I really enjoyed exploring their work and I think you will too. Here’s a few of them, in no particular order:

Oto Brglez — London

Oto’s a true hacker. Late last year he built 4 prototypes in 30 days and wrote about it. He’s the CTO of the world’s biggest DJ database.

Matt Lindzon — Toronto

I was blown away by Matt’s animal photography. His portfolio on 500px is a must see. It reminds me of the National Geographic exhibit I saw recently at the AGO in Toronto.

Kareem Shaya — New York

Kareem’s got a great, very thoughtful blog. Check out his post about “High-Resolution Employment Contracts.” He’s a front-end developer at Warby Parker and his first request on Volley is a doozy.

Aaron Lewis — New Haven

Aaron’s got a killer website and beautiful portfolio. He’s studying design and cognitive science at Yale.

Yoni Dejene — Addis Ababa

Yoni is working to make internet tech and funding accessible to young entrepreneurs in Africa through Oyama.

Tagg Jefferson — Chattanooga

Tagg is a really ambitious young entrepreneur who is analyzing cities’ electrical grid datasets with Gridcure.

Benjamin Issenmann — Paris

Benjamin is a talented designer who makes amazing Minecraft videos. Check out his Minecraft kaleidoscope.

Kevin Yun — Chicago

Kevin’s the founder of a UX and UI bootcamp in Chicago and St. Louis called Designation. It’s impressive how quickly they’ve been growing.

Nick Grossman — Boston

Nick calls himself a “student of the internet.” I really enjoyed his writing on what he calls “Regulation 2.0," the idea that government can adopt regulatory techniques that have been pioneered by web platforms to achieve trust and safety at scale. Actually, it’s made me think a lot about the inverse: the potential for online communities, particularly in their infancy, to learn from government…

Ashley Read — London

This week, Ash launched Backstories.io, a site that profiles the stories behind your favorite startups. I was impressed with his execution.