Justin Hooker
Strategic misfit Status quo anarchist Grumpiest optimist in the room
I don't have a formal background in anything I'm actually good at. I learn by doing things I'm not qualified to do yet.
I find the problems everyone else files under "too complicated" or "not worth it." Messy, local, inconvenient. That's usually where the leverage is.
I don't push things. No theater, no performance. If something needs force to move, it's already broken. I build things that hold up on their own.
Chicago raised. Amsterdam matched me. Rough around the edges, intoxicating, effortlessly charming and a little dangerous. Six years in and it stopped being temporary a long time ago. I've made the hard calls, cut what didn't work, burned what needed burning. The city and I understand each other.
At work, I remove friction. Outside of it, I build friction back in on purpose. Sculpting clay, abstract painting, welding. The more I create, the less I consume. That's where the learning is.
Named after Don Quixote's horse. Unglamorous, underestimated, ridden with total conviction by someone everyone agreed was delusional.
I am that man. I also know exactly how it looks.
Here's the part no one tells you about tilting at windmills. You get good at it. Occupational hazard of the hopelessly idealistic.
I build for the ones who understand that. The ones who see the angle and go anyway. Who romanticize the lost cause just enough to start, then stay long enough to make it real.
Most people stop when it gets inconvenient. That's usually right before it gets interesting.
Vertical SaaS for Dutch tattoo studios. KVK compliance per artist, belastingdienst tax reporting, scheduling that fits how studios actually run. Nobody builds this because it's hard, local, and unsexy. That's the point.
Voice-based Dutch practice PWA. Built in a weekend. Whisper + GPT-4. The only way to get better at speaking Dutch is to speak it badly until you don't. Applies to most things.
What pays the bills. First I automated the team. Then I automated myself. Built a CRM from scratch that runs on client signals, not guesses. Focused on when and why things convert, not just if they do. Nobody asked for it. Nobody argued with the numbers.
Not open. Not closed either. I pay attention to good problems and people who actually move on them. If something here connects, or you just want to argue your side of something...
justin@rocinante.run →