Hi, I'm Dan.

The short story

I started out managing a pizza shop. Hiring, scheduling, inventory, angry Fridays. I know exactly what it's like to run a small operation where every dollar and every hour is spoken for.

Then I went back to school for programming and databases, and spent the next fifteen years building systems used by government agencies, hospitals, banks, and online retailers. My specialty was taking messy, scattered information and turning it into something organized and reliable. Systems where being wrong wasn't an option, because the data was medical claims or public money.

Along the way I noticed something that bothered me. Big companies have teams and budgets to make technology carry the boring work. Small businesses get the opposite: overpriced software that doesn't fit, or a website that becomes one more chore. And the gap is widening, fast.

So in 2021 I started 4D4 Labs. Today I use my industry experience to bring enterprise advantages to small businesses at a prices that makes sense for their opperation.

What I'm like to work with

• Plain English. I explain what you're getting and why, without the jargon. If I can't explain it simply, I haven't earned your money yet.
• Direct line. The person doing your work is the person answering your questions. No account manager, no ticket queue.
• Been in your shoes. I ran a busy pizza shop before I ever wrote software. Slow Tuesdays, no-show Fridays, counting every dollar in the drawer.
• Honest, even when it costs me. If you don't need what you're asking for, I'll say so. If I'm not the right fit, I'll tell you who is.

Where I've worked

• 4D4 Labs · Founder. Websites, care plans, and automation for small businesses. Founded 2021; my full-time work today.
• Grant Street Group · Data engineering and reporting for government finance systems: the kind where the numbers have to be right.
• Avantia · Healthcare data: medical claims processing and Medicare submission systems, built for accuracy and auditability.
• Mortgage Information Services · Built a real-time ordering API used by banking clients. Live within months, paying for itself in the first one.
• Briteskies · Custom features and integrations for e-commerce sites.
• Ruralogic · Technical lead for a team of fifteen developers across concurrent projects.
• Domino's Pizza · General manager: daily operations, hiring, scheduling, the register math. The closest you can get to running a small business without owning one.

Off the clock

I build things nobody asked for. The one I'm proudest of is a reading tool that reads any text aloud while highlighting and scrolling along, so you can follow with your eyes and ears together. I made it for my own reading; it turns out to be a genuinely useful thing for dyslexic readers. That's the kind of problem I like: small, real, and solved properly.