Nick Shapiro

I’m a software engineer with a founder’s mindset. I focus on the results that matter. I have 20+ years of web development experience, with deep expertise in full-stack LAMP, Python, PHP, and Perl. I also work in TypeScript and have spent recent years building reinforcement learning projects and environments from scratch with PyTorch.

I founded Game Craftsmen and ran it for 12 years. I bootstrapped it with credit cards, ran a Kickstarter, raised angel and institutional funding, and grew it to profitability. I had a successful exit, every investor made money. The new owner is profitable, my entire team stayed in place (minus me), and the games are still running with a thriving community. Win-win-win.

I hired and managed 20+ employees and 100+ freelancers, establishing all processes across the org. I very much enjoyed mentoring many junior engineers and launching their careers. Working with so many junior engineers has translated extremely well to working with modern AI coding workflows. You need to figure out what context they need and make sure they have it. Tell them which patterns to follow, point to which parts of the codebase are relevant. Give them clear goals, explain what is important, why it is important, and have patience. Sometimes they don’t get it right the first time. Good tests and tight feedback loops help.

I’ve also been CTO at a long running startup, and a software engineer at a company that was acquired by Google for $500M. See resume.

I hold an MS in Computer Science and a BS in Astrophysics from Michigan State University.