Ben Williams

I'm a creator and engineer who designs and builds things on the web.

Professional

Co-Founder - Ahoy

Writing

I write sporadically on this website and Twitter. See Essays and @biwills.

Open Source Software

I maintain a small set of open-source software:

• gatsby-plugin-aphrodite: Provides drop-in support for Aphrodite in Gatsby.
• 17-vscode-theme: A dark blue theme for VS Code
• tiny-throttle: A throttle & debounce package in 329 bytes
• TypeTac: TypeScript library for Tachyons
• vscode-plv8: VS Code support for JavaScript syntax highlighting in PLV8 PostgreSQL code
• seal-store: Framework agnostic immutable state store

You can find all my public code on my Github @biw.

Interests

• Lowering barriers to creation and funding
• The 100 and 1000 true fans monetization models
• Writing world-class software
• Chess
• Playing and making music
• Reading

Previous

Most recently, I was a Product Engineer at Ideaflow, helping build the next generation of knowledge tools.

Before that, I was the co-founder of AuxParty, working on building an immersive 3D social music experience. We scaled the product to 50 countries worldwide with millions of songs listened to collectively and got a chance to put on events with over a dozen amazing artists/producers. We stopped working on it after hitting financial difficulties associated with music licensing.

I also used to moonlight as a Code Reviewer, performing on-demand code reviews and security audits for companies through PullRequest.

Before that, I worked at:

• Shone with a small product-focused engineering team working on autonomous technologies for container ships.
• Aero which at the time, was working on rethinking business travel. They have since pivoted.
• Masterclass as a Software Engineer, working on the growth team & engineering tooling.
• Microsoft as an SWE Intern, working on Windows kernel security.
• Tensentric as an SWE Intern, working on medical device security.

Contact me

🌻served from a computer in San Jose, California