Zac Altman

Tech Entrepreneur. Product Obsessed. Startup Advisor.

Now: I spend my time advising early-stage startups in the US and Australia.

Previously: Founded & sold two successful companies, most recently LoungeBuddy to American Express in 2019 where I served as VP of Digital Product & Engineering (-2021).

📍 Currently based in Sydney, Australia.

Thanks for visiting my little slice of the internet 💙.

Last Updated: 6 Aug, 2022

What I'm Learning:

Spanish

Started practicing in 2021 before traveling to Spain. I am still a beginner, however I aim for basic conversational confidence by the end of 2022.

Achieving an intermediate level (B1/B2) in a language is something i've wanted to reach for years. In the past I've attempted Czech 🇨🇿, German 🇩🇪, and Chinese 🇨🇳 without success. Consistency has been my greatest barrier - hardened by accessibility of native speakers (Czech), the large & demotivating uphill battle of character recognition (Chinese), or simply not making study a priority.

Having lived in California for 10 years, Spanish was an obvious choice. I'm exposed on a daily basis, have native-speaking friends, and it's a widely accessible language. This time will be different, right?

Django & Python

I have a number of ideas I want to rapidly prototype and experiment with. A full-stack framework is ideal for this. Only problem? The last full-stack framework I used was Rails back in 2008. I wasn't very good at it either 🐣.

Django was a natural fit for a number of reasons. The first being my recent dabbling in Python for some Data & Machine Learning projects and desire to dive deeper. Second - it's maturity. It can be tempting to try the hot new things (put it on a blockchain!), but that doesn't help you ship better products quicker. Finally - the community. I've only ever heard great things. That said: I'm yet to actively be a part of the community 🙊.

Would it be faster to go with what I already know? Probably, but where's the fun in that 🤷‍♀️.

Upcoming travels:

  • 🇦🇺 Sydney, Melbourne
  • 🇮🇩 Bali
  • 🇺🇸 NYC

Places I want to visit:

Thoughts and musings:

Resources:

Advocate for the Australian Startup Community 🇦🇺.