Jess Maddox^*

Partnerships, DoorDash

the long version. philosophy at brown, then eighteen months in vietnam building caterpillar’s dealer marketing from nothing, then eight years of triplingo, two million raised and a dozen of the fortune 500. at doordash since 2023.

TripLingo

it started with not being able to order lunch in hanoi. launched cinco de mayo 2011 in five languages, posted to hacker news the next morning, and sold eight years later.

A Wall Street Journal crossword

the first grid had 92 black squares. the house rule of thumb is 71 to 75. three rounds of notes from the times, then the journal took it, then the olympics the puzzle was about got postponed a year. they held the slot anyway.

The annexation

how twenty houses left unincorporated dekalb for the city of atlanta. mostly a story about paperwork: one signature page dated 2016 instead of 2019, a slip of the pen, sent the entire petition back to the beginning.

Two years in Vietnam and India

everything written, recent first, then the archive from 2009 to 2010: a 33-hour train to delhi, hampi without spills, and leaving vietnam.

Spoiler Alert

reads incoming notifications and holds anything that would give away the score until you say otherwise. nothing leaves the phone, there is no account and no server. the group chat is free to keep losing its mind without you.

Converge

the calendar is empty; your year is not. it learns the birthdays, tournaments and holidays that turn up whether or not anyone books them, then ranks the weekends most likely to survive contact with real life. built for a camping trip three families keep meaning to take.

Games people play

323 games invented by people rather than companies, sorted into 24 families by what a game does to you rather than whatever it happens to be called where you grew up.

The workbench

six of them: a mac menu bar app that watches your posture, a 2017 bachelor party preserved as one enormous board, a browser game built with my son, and a pizza calculator.