Hi, I’m David.
I spent five years leading development at MonsterInsights, on a plugin that runs on 3M+ sites.
I used to keep two websites: one for the work I’ve done, and one for the writing. As if they were different people, but they aren’t (despite all my dissociation). So this is the whole thing: what I’m building, the record of how I got here, and everything I’ve been thinking about along the way.
Right now
Live on the App Store
Kiveo
A private reading journal for iOS. Save quotes, write reflections, track sessions. Built for deep reading, not speed.
700+ downloads and 1,400+ reflections saved so far.
Built solo, SwiftUI front to back, no account needed.
Waitlist open
BeaconStat
Usage analytics for distributed software.
Know what ships and what sticks.
Plugin installs, feature adoption, and version distribution across a user base you don’t host.
The record
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Awesome Motive
Developer Team Lead
2024 — 2026
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Awesome Motive
Senior Developer
2023 — 2024
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Awesome Motive
Developer
2021 — 2023
Things I’ve shipped.
Performance, privacy, and user experience: the intersection I’m most at home in, and the three things usually traded away first.
WordPress
AI
Natural-language analytics
Site owners ask questions about their traffic in plain English and get real answers. Built inside a plugin serving millions of sites; so it had to be fast, private, and impossible to get wrong.
PHP · Vue.js · REST APIs · WP-CLI
Platform
Infra
Agency platform & ops
API design, transactional email, R2 storage, and server provisioning: the tooling that lets a small agency run real client infrastructure without a dedicated ops team.
NestJS · Cloudflare · Railway
iOS
Privacy
Native iOS apps
Small, privacy-first apps with native performance.
Swift · SwiftUI · CloudKit
Latest writing.
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Everywhere And Nowhere: Dichotomies Of The Mind
I’m trying to experiment with a few (even) more personal pieces on this blog. It’s not a series of blog posts, although…
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Quarterly Reviews In The Time Of AI
What should I look for when all I have to go by is a wall of text with tens (or even hundreds)…
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Managing in Shambles
I’ve been thinking about writing this post for a while. Hesitating, really. It’s not an easy one for me to write and…