❯ bkonkle / photon grove
about me
i’ve been building software for almost twenty years now. i’ve worked at big companies like vercel, led teams at formidable, and spent a good chunk of that time helping startups find their footing. i think the thing i’ve come to believe most strongly is that the hardest parts of this job aren’t usually technical — they’re about people, priorities, and whether you’re brave enough to keep things simple.
lately i’m spending most of my energy on photon grove: the business behind app releases and consulting work. storyverse is the biggest project right now, with fanstacks close behind. bkonkle is the public side of that work, where i stream, make videos, and write about how the projects take shape.
i live near denver, colorado, close to the mountains. when i’m not writing code i’m probably reading manga, chipping away at my japanese, playing pc games, or spending time with my wife and kids. type-system nerd. rust enthusiast. quietly hopeful about what a small group of careful people can still build.
❯ how i think about building software
simplicity first
three lines of clear code will beat a clever abstraction almost every time. i’ve watched a lot of good projects get buried under premature cleverness, and i’d rather not add to the pile.
ship in small steps
small, reversible changes over big rewrites. every deploy should be safe to roll back. momentum comes from finishing things, not planning them.
developer experience
fast feedback loops, clear patterns, and honest tooling do more for a team than any process framework i’ve ever seen.
ai as a collaborator
i use ai a lot. i think it works best when it’s a thoughtful collaborator, not a silver bullet, and when you’re still the one holding the pen at the end of the day.
❯ the road so far
photon grove + bkonkle
building photon grove apps while using bkonkle as the public handle for streams, videos, articles, and day-to-day build notes.
vercel & formidable
software engineer at vercel working on the platform powering millions of deployments. before that, engineering manager at formidable labs, leading teams building performance-minded software for a wide range of clients.
startups & craft
led engineering teams through growth phases at a handful of startups. got deep into the full stack — react, node, python — and worked on everything from rewriting old systems to starting fresh ones from nothing.
where it started
got my first taste of the web in the early 90s and never really stopped. html in notepad, then python and django, then javascript — always drawn to whatever made it easier to bring an idea to life.