Technology
Isaac here. I’ve always loved getting behind the curtains, to see how things work, to see the ideas and backstories and motivations in play.
I found a natural home in programming. I’ve been at it since 2003. Like Lightward itself, it’s a place where I explore giving form to philosophy. Before shifting full-time over to Lightward, I held a senior engineer role at Apple Inc.
Right now, I’m focusing this class of effort on Shopify.
Locksmith
In 2010, I discovered Shopify. I start with that fact, because what I did with that was an important part in the formation of Lightward: I recognized a group that was absolutely focused on finding and executing good patterns, at every level of their work, and I invested in them.
Not financially, but I did make an app for their platform, originally to solve a problem that a friend-of-a-friend (“how do I reserve some products for only certain people?”). I left the solution on their app store, and helped out everyone else who started using it. Ten years later, that-which-is-now-Locksmith has made a couple million dollars, helped out something like 10k merchants around the world, and served just an insane number of customers. Locksmith is a widely-respected name, because we’ve done a very good job at doing our job. I emphasize that last bit because we’ve also done a good job of defining our job, resulting in a sustainable flow that the five of us on this project handle capably, and with honest pleasure.
Mechanic
Haha, I love talking about Mechanic. I’m still learning what it is.
My current understanding is that Mechanic makes developer-merchant relationships better, happier, more efficient. Developers get a tool that allows them to rapidly solve a problem, removing all the parts that aren’t the problem, including handing the keys and controls over to the merchant. Merchants get a way to have problems solved more quickly (and therefore less expensively), with a consistent and friendly way to manage the results.
Mechanic is my newest significant effort; it came into being in 2018. It’s currently serving about 3k stores, at a clip of about a million actions per day, with an active and growing community. Developers universally love it. Merchants universally love it. I’m intrigued by it, because it addresses the same duality that Shopify does: how do we serve both of these communities really, really well?