Hi! I’m Dave Kiss, and I help make the internet.

I had a pretty early start on this web stuff – I still remember the modem connection sounds of AOL 2.5 emanating from my eMachines desktop like it was yesterday.

My first website was a Kool-aid fan site that I built in 2004 (yeah, it’s still up.) However, it was 1995’s Spider-Man Cartoon Maker that was the real catalyst for pursuing my first dream of being a world class video producer.

For years, I was laser-focused on being one of the best videographers out there. I went to university to study digital media production. While I was there, I had to make a portfolio website to display my videos on and realized that I really enjoyed the challenge that building a professional website presented.

In 2011, I moved to Chicago and started working with a small 3D animation studio called Greyscalegorilla. We needed a way to showcase some videos on the company’s website, so I researched some options and wasn’t able to find a great solution. So I did what I always do in that kind of situation – come up with my own way to make it work.

Rather than building a tool that only worked for us, I thought it’d be a good fit for other companies that faced a similar task. With permission, I open-sourced the code and assigned a price tag to some of the more complicated features.

In 2012, I started selling my own software online and took a few years to grow the sales to a sustainable level. I did it by extracting my truth from the industry’s smartest brains, applying it to my ideas along the way, and finding out firsthand what did and didn’t work.

I worked happily this way for years – and then, the pandemic came along and changed everything. I had had enough alone time. It felt like it was time to get back out and collaborate with others.

I’d always thought devrel might be a good fit, so I applied to a community role with Mux in 2021, sold my project in 2022, and have been learning about what it means to provide a great developer experience ever since.

I get a ton of satisfaction from sharing what I know. Whether it’s helping you write your first few lines of JavaScript, making your first online sale, or talking about the importance of meetups, I want to do my best to help you do better work and share what I’ve learned along the way.

You might enjoy this site if any of the following values resonate with you:

• I value autonomy; my time is extremely important to me.
• I want to take ownership of the things that I make. I did not get in to creative work just to crank out work for someone else.
• I want to learn about the things that I care about the most – not the rigid requirements of what only makes someone else happy.
• I want more out of my life than sitting predictably at my office desk every day. I want to push, encounter new situations, and explore.
• I want to have input on what I should work on for the day. I don’t want to just rent out my brain space for someone else’s agenda.
• I want to collaborate with others who are just as passionate about working as I am.
• I believe in listening to my body and my mind. If I’m not feeling like I’m putting out strong work, I should stop and come back when I’m ready. I don’t want to be made to feel bad for taking workdays off.
• I believe in the importance of remote work, and I prioritize my work environment over a predictable commute and cubicle.
• I enjoy applying all of the ideas and inspiration that surround me to a project of my own.
• I believe that the time I spend working is, at best, indirectly related to the value of the things that I create.