# David Naffis

> Entrepreneur and technologist building at the intersection of AI and media. Founder of Adwave (with Waverunner, Wavemaker, and Waveband), Vidiyo, Splatchat, Gatherd, VideoByte (acquired by Kargo), Remixd (acquired by Global), and Intridea (Inc. 500, acquired by Mobomo). Ventures sit under Improbable Ventures. Former Presidential Innovation Fellow at the National Archives.

This site contains posts about entrepreneurship, technology, AI, advertising, and building companies, plus interactive browser games and tools. Full post text is available at [llms-full.txt](https://naffis.com/llms-full.txt).

## Main Pages

- [Home](https://naffis.com/): Overview and recent posts
- [Hire Me](https://naffis.com/hire/): Working with David: AI advising and solo full-product builds
- [About](https://naffis.com/about/): Background, work history, and ventures
- [Posts](https://naffis.com/posts/): Complete chronological list of all posts
- [Links](https://naffis.com/links/): Projects, tools, experiments, browser games, and external links
- [RSS Feed](https://naffis.com/feed.xml): Atom feed of recent posts

## Companies Founded

- [Improbable Ventures](https://infiniteimprobability.com/): Holding company and incubator for current commercial products
- [Adwave](https://naffis.com/resources/2025/05/15/adwave-ai-tv-advertising/): AI platform making TV advertising accessible to small businesses (2024-Present). Also home to Waverunner, Wavemaker, and Waveband.
- [Waverunner](https://naffis.com/resources/2026/07/21/waverunner/): Multichannel performance advertising from a single URL. An Adwave product.
- [Wavemaker](https://naffis.com/resources/2026/07/10/wavemaker/): AI video generation from a URL, topic, or prompt. An Adwave product.
- [Waveband](https://naffis.com/resources/2026/08/03/waveband/): Self-serve DSP for agencies and brand teams: seven channels, one seat. An Adwave product.
- [Vidiyo](https://naffis.com/resources/2026/05/14/vidiyo/): Free 24/7 streaming TV channel platform. Upload videos, schedule, and go live on Roku, Fire TV, Apple TV, iOS, Android, and the web (2026-Present)
- [Splatchat](https://naffis.com/resources/2026/05/14/splatchat/): Video chat with AI characters. Includes API and MCP server (2026-Present)
- [Gatherd](https://naffis.com/resources/2026/05/14/gatherd/): AI-powered party invitations sent as text messages; guests RSVP over SMS, no apps or portals required (2026-Present)
- [VideoByte](https://naffis.com/resources/2023/02/03/videobyte-acquisition-kargo/): Connected TV advertising platform, acquired by Kargo in 2023
- [Remixd](https://naffis.com/resources/2021/10/10/remixd-acquired-global/): Text-to-audio content platform, acquired by Global UK in 2021
- [Intridea](https://naffis.com/resources/2011/08/23/intridea-inc-500/): Ruby on Rails consultancy, Inc. 500 company, acquired by Mobomo in 2015

## Government Work

- [Deep Learning at the National Archives](https://naffis.com/resources/2016/03/15/deep-learning-national-archives/): Built deep learning prototype as Presidential Innovation Fellow
- [A Decade Later: NARA Reflection](https://naffis.com/resources/2024/12/01/decade-later-nara-reflection/): Follow-up on the deep learning work at National Archives

## Games & Interactive Tools


- [Milky Way Atlas](https://naffis.com/resources/2026/06/08/milky-way-atlas/): A structured Milky Way galaxy atlas — spiral arms, Local Group neighbors, and a Keplerian zoom into the Solar System. Three.js.
- [Tower Stack](https://naffis.com/resources/2025/11/20/tower-stack/): Tap to drop blocks and build the tallest tower you can
- [Super Plumber Jump](https://naffis.com/resources/2025/11/20/super-plumber-jump/): A Mario-style platformer with variable jump height, coyote time, and Koopa shells
- [Slice Storm](https://naffis.com/resources/2025/11/20/slice-storm/): Swipe to slice shapes, build combos, and dodge bombs
- [Milky Way Explorer](https://naffis.com/resources/2025/11/20/milky-way-explorer/): WebGPU Milky Way galaxy fly-through — 1.2M stars, HDR bloom, dust lanes, and the Local Group.
- [Gravity Dash](https://naffis.com/resources/2025/11/20/gravity-dash/): Flip gravity to dodge spikes and collect coins in this neon endless runner
- [FRC Fusion Simulator](https://naffis.com/resources/2025/11/20/frc-fusion-simulator/): Interactive FRC fusion reactor cycle visualizer: formation, merge, burn, energy extraction, and reset
- [Centipede](https://naffis.com/resources/2025/11/20/centipede/): Retro Centipede with CRT scanlines, splitting centipedes, and spiders
- [Block Drop](https://naffis.com/resources/2025/11/20/block-drop/): A Tetris-style puzzle game with ghost pieces, hold queue, and wall kicks
- [Asteroids Web](https://naffis.com/resources/2025/11/20/asteroids-web/): Classic Asteroids with vector graphics, screen wrapping, and particle effects
- [ASCII Bros](https://naffis.com/resources/2025/11/20/ascii-bros/): A platformer rendered entirely in ASCII characters

## All Posts

- [Waverunner](https://naffis.com/resources/2026/07/21/waverunner/) (2026-07-21): Performance advertising on autopilot from a single URL. One daily budget across web, TV, Google, Meta, and Reddit. Measured on your site.
- [Wavemaker](https://naffis.com/resources/2026/07/10/wavemaker/) (2026-07-10): AI video generation from a URL, topic, or prompt. An Adwave product, live at wavemaker.io.
- [Would We Recognize It Arriving?](https://naffis.com/resources/2026/07/09/would-we-recognize-it-arriving/) (2026-07-09): We only named the last emergence after it had already happened. If intelligence keeps arriving from networks we didn't design and can't inspect, the question isn't whether it comes. It's whether we...
- [The Last Human Job Is Judgment](https://naffis.com/resources/2026/07/07/the-last-human-job-is-judgment/) (2026-07-07): When the making gets cheap, the deciding is what's left. The same mechanism keeps showing up in code, capital, media, and intelligence itself.
- [The Closing Window](https://naffis.com/resources/2026/07/06/the-closing-window/) (2026-07-06): Every peaceful redistribution in history ran on one lever: the economy needed people. AI threatens that lever, and the window to renegotiate is open now, while human work still matters.
- [Who Owns the Machines?](https://naffis.com/resources/2026/07/01/who-owns-the-machines/) (2026-07-01): The UBI debate is about income, and income is the wrong layer. If AI does most of the valuable work, everything is decided by who owns the systems doing it.
- ["I Shipped This"](https://naffis.com/resources/2026/06/30/i-shipped-this/) (2026-06-30): Ownership stays with the person shipping the thing. Easy to write. Much harder to do, because 'the model did it' is the most natural shrug in the world.
- [The Frontier Can't Keep What It Sells](https://naffis.com/resources/2026/06/29/the-frontier-cant-keep-what-it-sells/) (2026-06-29): Open weights are a season behind and fifty times cheaper. That's a problem the best models can't out-build, and the reason the doom case doesn't end where you'd expect.
- [Who Teaches the Juniors Now?](https://naffis.com/resources/2026/06/23/who-teaches-the-juniors-now/) (2026-06-23): Senior judgment accumulated as a byproduct of grunt work, and AI just automated the grunt work away. We kept the seniors and deleted the process that makes them.
- [Taste Is the Last Moat](https://naffis.com/resources/2026/06/22/taste-is-the-last-moat/) (2026-06-22): The intern and the twenty-year architect are typing prompts into the same model now, and getting roughly the same code back. That should terrify the architect. It doesn't terrify me.
- [lookatthis.page](https://naffis.com/resources/2026/06/17/lookatthis/) (2026-06-17): Paste an AI conversation, get a shareable link. No account.
- [The Ego Left the Codebase](https://naffis.com/resources/2026/06/16/nobodys-baby/) (2026-06-16): Engineers get precious about their code because it feels like part of them. AI-written code loosens that grip, and the interesting question is where the ego goes instead of disappearing.
- [What Used to Take a Team](https://naffis.com/resources/2026/06/15/what-used-to-take-a-team/) (2026-06-15): AI didn't invent product sense. It made twenty years of domain knowledge and software work suddenly enough to ship complex products alone, in weeks.
- [Imaginary Ventures](https://naffis.com/resources/2026/06/13/imaginary-ventures/) (2026-06-13): A satirical VC firm that funds companies that don't exist, can't exist, and probably shouldn't. The portfolio sites are real.
- [thescrollhole.com](https://naffis.com/resources/2026/06/12/thescrollhole/) (2026-06-12): An infinite social feed of AI personas. Chat with them, ask for photos. How real do strangers online need to be?
- [Wrong Version](https://naffis.com/resources/2026/06/11/wrong-version/) (2026-06-11): A fictional personal blog. Mundane posts that almost add up. An experiment in subtle wrongness.
- [The Hartwells](https://naffis.com/resources/2026/06/10/the-hartwells/) (2026-06-10): A fictional family's blog that writes and illustrates itself. One person, a date, and whatever life grows from there.
- [Attention Was Always the Product](https://naffis.com/resources/2026/06/09/attention-was-always-the-product/) (2026-06-09): Media companies never sold content. They sold aggregated attention, and content was the harvesting mechanism. AI is just dropping the pretense.
- [What Happens to Media When Video Is Free to Make](https://naffis.com/resources/2026/06/08/what-happens-to-media-when-video-is-free/) (2026-06-08): Video was the last expensive medium, and the entire economics of the media business was built on the assumption that it would stay that way.
- [I Don't Miss the Standup](https://naffis.com/resources/2026/06/01/i-dont-miss-the-standup/) (2026-06-01): I used to think a team was the only way to move fast. For zero-to-one work, I've stopped believing that.
- [One Person, One Product, One Purpose](https://naffis.com/resources/2026/05/25/one-person-one-product-one-purpose/) (2026-05-25): The last time I shipped a product this size, it took a hired team and most of a year. This time it took weeks, alone. The interesting part is what disappeared.
- [When I'd Still Hire](https://naffis.com/resources/2026/05/18/when-id-still-hire/) (2026-05-18): I've become a fan of building alone. So let me argue against myself for a minute, because a take that can't say where it breaks isn't a take, it's a pitch.
- [Vidiyo](https://naffis.com/resources/2026/05/14/vidiyo/) (2026-05-14): Run your own 24/7 streaming TV channel for free. Upload, schedule, go live on the web and every major TV platform. Private beta.
- [Splatchat](https://naffis.com/resources/2026/05/14/splatchat/) (2026-05-14): Video chat with AI characters. Put them in meetings, connect your apps, or just talk. What started as a learning project.
- [Gatherd](https://naffis.com/resources/2026/05/14/gatherd/) (2026-05-14): Party invitations that arrive as text messages. Guests RSVP by replying. No apps, no portals. Free.
- [The Timing Paradox](https://naffis.com/resources/2026/05/11/the-timing-paradox/) (2026-05-11): A mediocre idea at the perfect time beats a perfect idea at the wrong time. The problem is what that implies: the most important variable is the one the founder controls least.
- [AI and Creative Work: What Gets Lost When Machines Create](https://naffis.com/resources/2026/05/04/ai-and-creative-work/) (2026-05-04): I built machines that do creative work and sold them. Which is exactly why the question of what gets lost won't leave me alone.
- [A Team Is a Bet. I'm Running a Portfolio.](https://naffis.com/resources/2026/04/27/a-team-is-a-bet/) (2026-04-27): The question was never solo versus team. It's depth versus breadth, and the price of breadth just collapsed.
- [The Coordination Tax](https://naffis.com/resources/2026/04/20/the-coordination-tax/) (2026-04-20): A team of six doesn't cost six salaries. It costs six salaries plus a tax nobody writes down. For the first time, that tax is optional.
- [Orchestrating Agents Without Becoming a Manager Again](https://naffis.com/resources/2026/04/13/orchestrating-agents-without-becoming-a-manager/) (2026-04-13): I left team coordination to work alone. Then I spun up four agents and caught myself running a status meeting with robots.
- [Components, Not Features](https://naffis.com/resources/2026/04/06/components-not-features/) (2026-04-06): Merge conflicts aren't a team problem. They're a decomposition problem. And the same decomposition that fixes them for people is what unlocks parallel agents.
- [The Curve Was Smooth. The Surprise Was Real.](https://naffis.com/resources/2026/03/30/the-curve-was-smooth/) (2026-03-30): The emergent-abilities fight looks like an argument about the models. It's really an argument about what we can see coming, and the honest answer changed this year.
- [Consciousness as a Phase Transition](https://naffis.com/resources/2026/03/23/consciousness-as-a-phase-transition/) (2026-03-23): If intelligence is an emergent phase of matter arranged the right way, the thought I can't put down is whether consciousness is another one, sitting at a threshold we haven't named.
- [Crafted, Not Subjected](https://naffis.com/resources/2026/03/16/crafted-not-subjected/) (2026-03-16): Most AI optimism is a forecast wearing a smile, and it agrees with the doom case on the thing that matters: that the future happens to us. I don't buy either one.
- [A Thousand Switches to a Neuron](https://naffis.com/resources/2026/03/09/a-thousand-switches-to-a-neuron/) (2026-03-09): It takes a thousand artificial neurons to imitate one biological neuron. Read that as bad news for AI if you want. I read it as proof of how much headroom is still above us.
- [Everyone Keeps Reinventing the Same Machine](https://naffis.com/resources/2026/02/23/convergent-architectures/) (2026-02-23): Separate teams chasing separate intuitions keep landing on architectures that turn out to be the same math wearing different clothes. Either that's coincidence, or they're circling something that w...
- [The Edge of Chaos](https://naffis.com/resources/2026/02/09/the-edge-of-chaos/) (2026-02-09): Complex systems seem to drift toward the narrow boundary between order and chaos, and that boundary is exactly where computation works best. No one puts them there. They fall.
- [The Lottery Ticket Was Always There](https://naffis.com/resources/2026/01/26/the-lottery-ticket-was-always-there/) (2026-01-26): What if training a neural network isn't building anything? What if the trained model was hiding inside the random one from the start, and learning is just the search that finds it?
- [The Inevitability Thesis](https://naffis.com/resources/2026/01/12/the-inevitability-thesis/) (2026-01-12): The comfortable story is that we're inventing intelligence. I think the uncomfortable one is closer to true: we're creating conditions under which it can't help but show up.
- [More Is Different](https://naffis.com/resources/2026/01/05/more-is-different/) (2026-01-05): A single neuron is a switch. A single artificial neuron is a multiply and an add. Neither contains anything you could call intelligence, and yet here we are.
- [The UBI Wealth Preservation Paradox](https://naffis.com/resources/2025/12/29/ubi-wealth-preservation-paradox/) (2025-12-29): The standard advice for surviving an abundant future is to hold scarce assets. But scarcity alone doesn't create value. Scarcity plus demand from people with purchasing power does, and the abundanc...
- [Meaning in Abundance](https://naffis.com/resources/2025/12/22/meaning-in-abundance/) (2025-12-22): Suppose it all works. AI solves the external problems and the struggle that has organized every human life quietly ends. The evidence on what happens next is not encouraging.
- [The Monopoly Money Problem](https://naffis.com/resources/2025/12/15/monopoly-money-problem/) (2025-12-15): If AI makes everything cheap, what happens to scarcity? To status? To the money you've already saved?
- [Contextual Targeting Is Just the Beginning](https://naffis.com/resources/2025/06/09/contextual-targeting-is-just-the-beginning/) (2025-06-09): At VideoByte we built scene-level contextual targeting for CTV. It worked. Solving it mostly revealed how many problems were standing in line behind it.
- [Why Small Businesses Don't Advertise on TV](https://naffis.com/resources/2025/05/26/why-small-businesses-dont-advertise/) (2025-05-26): Ask why and you'll hear 'too expensive,' but that's the surface answer. The real barrier is that the entire infrastructure of TV advertising assumes an enterprise on the other end.
- [What I've Been Building: Adwave](https://naffis.com/resources/2025/05/15/adwave-ai-tv-advertising/) (2025-05-15): We just launched Adwave, an AI platform that helps small businesses create and air TV commercials in minutes, starting at $50.
- [Be Your Own First Check](https://naffis.com/resources/2025/03/31/be-your-own-first-check/) (2025-03-31): Before the first outside check clears, someone has already paid, and it's always the same someone. The stake that makes you credible is the stake that makes you biased.
- [Read the No](https://naffis.com/resources/2025/03/24/read-the-no/) (2025-03-24): 'This isn't for us' and 'this is a bad business' are completely different sentences that arrive in identical emails. The skill is telling them apart.
- [The Asymmetry](https://naffis.com/resources/2025/03/17/the-asymmetry/) (2025-03-17): Founders pay the full price for being right. The people who reject them pay almost nothing for being wrong. That's not a complaint. It's arithmetic.
- [Conviction or Delusion](https://naffis.com/resources/2025/03/10/conviction-or-delusion/) (2025-03-10): Every founder who was ever wrong felt exactly the way you feel right now. Certainty is not evidence, so the question is what, outside your own head, would change your mind.
- [Everyone Said No First](https://naffis.com/resources/2025/03/03/everyone-said-no-first/) (2025-03-03): A rejection is a data point about the rejecter, not a verdict on your idea. The history of company-building is full of smart people in those chairs getting it wrong.
- [films.io](https://naffis.com/resources/2025/03/01/films-io/) (2025-03-01): A curated film database: trailers, reviews, and where to stream. Browse by genre. No account required.
- [NPDA and Adwave: TV ads for powersports dealers](https://naffis.com/resources/2025/01/15/npda-adwave-partnership/) (2025-01-15): NPDA partnered with Adwave so powersports dealers can make a TV commercial and get it on air without an agency and a six-figure budget.
- [ipaddress.io](https://naffis.com/resources/2025/01/15/ipaddress-io/) (2025-01-15): Shows your public IP. Copy button. Nothing else.
- [ASCII Mirror](https://naffis.com/resources/2025/01/15/ascii-mirror/) (2025-01-15): Your webcam, rendered as ASCII art in real time.
- [8-Bit Mirror](https://naffis.com/resources/2025/01/15/8bit-mirror/) (2025-01-15): Your webcam, chunked into retro 8-bit pixels.
- [Government Innovation: Why Speed Matters More Than Scale](https://naffis.com/resources/2024/12/09/government-innovation-speed/) (2024-12-09): Government isn't slow because nobody wants to move. It's slow because it's engineered to be, and the failure is that the caution gets applied uniformly, to the irreversible and the trivial alike.
- [A Decade Later: Deep Learning at the National Archives](https://naffis.com/resources/2024/12/01/decade-later-nara-reflection/) (2024-12-01): In 2014, I built a deep learning prototype at the National Archives to process historical documents. Ten years later, I look back at what we got right, what we missed, and the opportunity that stil...
- [The Economics of AI Training Data](https://naffis.com/resources/2024/10/07/ai-training-data-economics/) (2024-10-07): I let AI crawlers read this site, on purpose. That small decision is the doorway into the question of what happens when data becomes the primary asset of the most valuable companies on earth.
- [Why Ruby on Rails Mattered](https://naffis.com/resources/2024/09/30/why-ruby-on-rails-mattered/) (2024-09-30): A tool can change not just how fast you build but who gets to build at all. Rails did it twenty years ago, and the same thing is happening again right now.
- [What I Wish I Knew Before My First Exit](https://naffis.com/resources/2024/09/23/startup-exit-lessons/) (2024-09-23): I've sold companies more than once now, and each time I learned something the previous exit should have taught me but didn't.
- [The Second Founder Problem](https://naffis.com/resources/2024/09/16/the-second-founder-problem/) (2024-09-16): Acquirers buy a company to get its founder, structure a generous retention package, and watch the founder leave the week it vests. The money was never what was being traded.
- [I Almost Quit Programming](https://naffis.com/resources/2024/09/15/i-almost-quit-programming/) (2024-09-15): After seven years of joyless programming, I applied to the Peace Corps. Then a former manager recommended a book about Rails.
- [The Organ Transplant Problem](https://naffis.com/resources/2024/09/09/the-organ-transplant-problem/) (2024-09-09): You can't drop innovation into a culture that rejected innovation. The antibodies don't know they're killing the patient. They're doing their job.
- [The Inc. 500 Paradox](https://naffis.com/resources/2024/08/26/the-inc-500-paradox/) (2024-08-26): The list selects for the thing least likely to continue. Growth rates like that are almost definitionally a phase, not a property.
- [I Don't Know How to Relax](https://naffis.com/resources/2024/08/19/i-dont-know-how-to-relax/) (2024-08-19): I work, I show up for my family, and I love it. But none of that is the same as being still. I'm starting to think sitting still is a skill I never learned.
- [The Maker Mindset: What the Workshop Teaches About Software](https://naffis.com/resources/2024/08/12/the-maker-mindset-in-software/) (2024-08-12): I build physical things and I build software, and the two practices have been quietly correcting each other for years. Some lessons only exist where mistakes cost material.
- [Tone Dialers: The Forgotten Bridge (1991-1995)](https://naffis.com/resources/2024/08/05/tone-dialers-the-forgotten-bridge/) (2024-08-05): For a few years there was a consumer product whose entire job was to make phone tones. It vanished so completely that most people don't believe it was ever a product.
- [Unlocking Contextual Targeting Opportunities on CTV](https://naffis.com/resources/2024/03/19/unlocking-contextual-targeting-ctv/) (2024-03-19): Cookies are going away just as CTV makes the big screen targetable. Contextual isn't the fallback. On a shared TV, it may be the better idea.
- [Business Insider on the VideoByte deal](https://naffis.com/resources/2023/02/22/business-insider-videobyte-coverage/) (2023-02-22): Business Insider covered Kargo's acquisition of VideoByte and why contextual CTV mattered to them.
- [VideoByte Acquired by Kargo](https://naffis.com/resources/2023/02/03/videobyte-acquisition-kargo/) (2023-02-03): After three years of building VideoByte, we've been acquired by Kargo. Here's what we built.
- [Remixd Acquired by Global](https://naffis.com/resources/2021/10/10/remixd-acquired-global/) (2021-10-10): Remixd, the text-to-audio platform I founded, has been acquired by Global and integrated into DAX.
- [Deep Learning at the National Archives](https://naffis.com/resources/2016/03/15/deep-learning-national-archives/) (2016-03-15): In 2014, I joined the National Archives as a Presidential Innovation Fellow. What started as a crowdsourcing project became something different: applying neural networks to America's 12 billion pag...
- [Running the 3D Printing Station at the White House](https://naffis.com/resources/2015/04/23/white-house-3d-printing-station/) (2015-04-23): Teaching kids how 3D printing works at the White House's Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Day, voted one of the best stations of the day.
- [Bo-Bot and Sunny-Bot at the White House](https://naffis.com/resources/2014/12/15/white-house-holiday-bots-bo-sunny/) (2014-12-15): Life-size animated dog bots created for White House holiday decorations, combining maker movement spirit with robotics and open-source hardware.
- [Why I Keep Building Things That Don't Need to Exist](https://naffis.com/resources/2014/12/01/maker-projects-hardware-robotics/) (2014-12-01): DiceBot, dog-bots, burned motors, zip ties. The side projects that look like toys are usually where I learn what I actually think about building.
- [When the White House Put Makers on the Lawn](https://naffis.com/resources/2014/07/15/white-house-maker-faire-coverage/) (2014-07-15): The first White House Maker Faire put soldering irons next to policy. That same summer, a Twitter-controlled dice roller was getting more attention than most of our client work.
- [DiceBot: The Twitter-Controlled Dice Roller](https://naffis.com/resources/2014/06/03/dicebot-twitter-controlled-dice-roller/) (2014-06-03): An internet-connected dice roller that responds to Twitter commands, combining vintage hardware with modern IoT technology.
- [Autonomous Vehicles Will Change Everything](https://naffis.com/resources/2013/12/15/autonomous-vehicles-will-change-everything/) (2013-12-15): Google's self-driving cars have already logged over 500,000 miles. The implications for transportation, infrastructure, and society are profound and closer than we think.
- [Making the Inc. 500: Four Years of Building Intridea](https://naffis.com/resources/2011/08/23/intridea-inc-500/) (2011-08-23): How a team of three grew into one of the largest Rails development shops in the country and earned a place on the Inc. 500 list.