Solo builder in North Carolina. Two decades in payments and enterprise technology, then a farm, then a system.
I spent twenty years inside large payments and enterprise systems, most of it at Visa, ending up as COO and CPO of Fraedom in Auckland. Good work. Serious work. The shape of it was always someone else’s shape.
In 2021 my wife Whitney and I moved to a twenty-three acre farm in North Carolina with three kids and no particular plan except to stop. We stopped for about six months. Then I started building.
A life built closer to the ground: family, animals, projects, software, tools, and a daily rhythm that feels more like making than managing. The systems I build now are meant to support that life, not replace it.
Persek OS grew out of that shift. So did the products, the AI work, the farm projects, and the part of me that still likes turning an idea into something real with my hands.
California taught me to build for somebody else. New Zealand taught me what running the thing actually costs. North Carolina is where I stopped doing both.
Family, the farm, software, and whatever I can make with code, wood, or both.
Farm life daily work
The farm is not scenery in the background. It is chores, repairs, fencing, animal care, small builds. Practical work that keeps me honest. A lot of my best thinking still happens while I am out on the tractor.
Homeschool this year
We pulled the kids out of school this year. Homeschool changed the rhythm of every weekday: fewer drop-offs, more time at the kitchen table. I am one of the teachers.
Building Replit to now
I started coding in Replit in fall 2024, before “vibe coding” was even the phrase for it. By 2025 it had turned into most of my time: AI work, product experiments, internal tools, farm projects, woodworking. That is the joke inside syntaxsawdust. Code on one side, sawdust on the other.
The things I gravitate to when nothing is pulling on my time. Rough sketches, not an inventory.
Bookslong fantasy series
I read a lot. Long series I can live inside for months. Over the last couple of years I have worked through every Brandon Sanderson book, finished Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time, and am now deep into Steven Erikson’s Malazan.
Trainingdaily
Gym in the house, sauna out back. More and more it is something the kids and I do together.
Shop timewood + power tools
Building things with my hands. I am not sure it counts as woodworking yet, but it is a favorite way to spend a Saturday.
Coachingkids’ soccer
I coach my kids’ soccer teams. A clean way to be with them and teach something real at the same time.
AI & vibe codingnight hobby
Most of my day job. Also what I pick up at night. Tinkering with agents, wiring small systems for the house and the farm.
Family timethe actual point
Tickle monsters. Cuddle piles. Running around the yard. Unhurried time with the kids is the whole point of the life I built.
Teaching the kidshomeschool, this year
Closer to apprenticeship than curriculum: more direct attention, more real projects, and a pace that fits the kid in front of me. It is as much learning for me as it is for them.
The values I actually live by. Not aspirations, the things I notice myself repeating in decisions.
Family. The non-negotiable anchor. When something pulls against them, the something else goes. Leaving New Zealand was this. Leaving Visa was this. Most of what I do now is this.
Faith. I follow Jesus. That one sentence does a lot of the work in my life. It tells me whose I am, what time is for, and that I am not the one running the show. Being reminded of that daily is a feature, not a weakness.
Stewardship. The things in my care are mine to leave better than I found them, not mine to extract from. Kids, animals, land, money, systems. All of it.
Craft. Do it well enough to still be proud of it a year later. Anyone can hack something together. That is not what I am here for.
Curiosity. Learning is a default state, not a phase. If I am not learning I am coasting.
Discipline. The work shows up whether I feel like it or not. The farm does not care about my mood. Neither does a three-year-old.
Responsibility. The outcome is mine. Whether the build is good, whether the kid is well, whether the decision was right. No blaming circumstance, no blaming systems.
Freedom. The quieter kind. Optionality, flexibility, not being locked into structures I did not choose. Part of why I left. Part of why I build the way I do now.
Integrity. Same person in public as in private. Same person in the hard conversation as in the easy one. Actions match words match values, or the whole thing falls apart.