Chance Griffin

I've worked at every level of the software stack. From designing and implementing user interfaces, to writing code, to configuring database schemas, to defining product and marketing strategy.

I started my career as a designer in the pharmaceutical industry, and quickly became frustrated with... almost everything about it. I used nights and weekends to teach myself Ruby, then Rails, and eventually formalized that effort at a coding bootcamp in Chicago.

I cut my teeth as a software developer on a team of three at Fugitive Labs. I designed user interfaces and marketing websites for dozens of clients, mostly startups. As startups go, some were used by tens of thousands of people and some were used by zero people. Working in the Node.js ecosystem gave me a renewed appreciation for my Ruby roots.

In 2015 I co-founded a web development studio called STURDY with two close friends. Over the next four years we would design and build dozens of software products for clients large and small. We learned a lot of hard lessons you won't find in any MBA curriculum. I refined my ability to identify challenges that customers are facing, and shape a set of features to address those challenges.

In 2018 we launched Dockhound, a marina management system informed by experience as a forklift driver at dry storage marinas. Dockhound is a refreshing departure from the enterprise software marinas are often subjected to. It's still going strong today, tracking hundreds of thousands of boat movements each year.

Since 2020 I've been working with Software for Research, helping universities and research institutions build software for digital health interventions.