Van Nguyen

I'm a co-founder of Spoondate.com. We're a dating site for meeting foodies. We're backed by 500Startups. I'm responsible for designing the entire technology stack and managing a decent amount of day-to-day operations. Nerds should know that we're building an entirely JavaScript stack and why that is cool.

Before Spoondate, I was a senior software engineer at Metamoki where we made popular social games like Mob Wars, CityZen, and many others. I managed server operations, databases, and was the go-to resource for information about tools. We leveraged amazing in-house technology in order to accomplish what other gaming companies do but with 1/10th of their team size.

Before Metamoki, I built an ElusiveHippo.com prototype in just less than 48 hours straight. Just for fun. Our entry (Rollcats) won first place in the OLPC game jam in Boston. I won a sweet, green OLPC from that. Shortly after, we shared first place with another team during the Global Game Jam in Cambridge. I hung out at MIT and taught a few courses there for the Educational Studies Program (ESP) and Spark.

Before ElusiveHippo, I was an engineer at FreeCause - an MIT startup that reaches huge communities online. I designed and built a massively scalable, real-time notification system there and became solely responsible for maintaining a very popular Ruby on Rails web application (OneCause.com).

Before that, I worked at a few other MIT startups. I built 3D positioning into VOIP software. I designed and implemented an interactive read-along storybook for kids - it transcribed audio and turned audio books into karaoke. I also interned at EM Photonics who make and sell accelerated hardware to run complicated simulations. I interned at CAPSL research labs and got to play with IBM Cyclops (80-core) processors.

Before that, I studied Computer Engineering at the University of Delaware. I got to play with prototypes that would eventually become the multi-touch technology found in many of Apple's products today. I thrived in circumstances where someone said "That is impossible"; then I go make it possible.