Hey, I'm Zach

Was working on TalkMode and wanted feedback from the Anthropic team. Saw an SPC hackathon, got rejected, but DM'd my way in with 12 hours notice. Went solo, made finalist with Yellow Pages (from a nonprofit hackathon). Got to chat with Anthropic's CPO about computer use and accessibility. Later joined SPC as a founder fellow.

Got referred to OpenAI, was told I was too green. Reached out to a VP and offered to prove out a new RLHF approach. Built a full A/B testing site in 4 days and ran it with 30+ people at a Starbucks near Seattle University.

Was told to let an Edge feature die. Bundled the fix with a Copilot PR, got marketing support, and made the case to ship it. Ended up driving a 7x retention gain.

Organized an AI Agents for Good Hackathon focused on nonprofit use cases.

During that stretch at Microsoft:

• Ran competitive analysis on AI agents for 6 months.
• Caught two bugs that would have broken Copilot for a lot of users.
• Coordinated daily Copilot metrics reporting across Edge, Windows, and Bing teams.
• Built TalkMode on the side from a not-great Airbnb while sick.

In 2023 I was using WeavRun (a running app that syncs music to pace) and wanted real-time coaching when I slowed down. Emailed them the idea, got a meeting with the Head of Product, and showed up with a working Swift prototype I'd built over the weekend. They offered to add me as a developer. Added a vibration mode for runners with limited hearing. Two years later Apple shipped something similar with Workout Buddy.