In 2013 Facebook shipped a search bar nobody could find. A clean blue line across the top of every page and no box: that was the concept. The bug reports said "my search bar is gone." I kept saying the boring, correct thing until we tested it. In our test, white won by more than 2x.
Dave Goldblatt. Software engineer at Mission Control. Founder of FollowUpEasy. San Francisco.
Make the search box white.
Now
October 2026
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Mission Control
Software engineer since April 2026. Enterprise AI deployments under hard constraints: Microsoft identity, mTLS, licensing, customer-data privacy. Customer-facing workflows, the reliability work underneath, and the weekly customer engagements.
Created engOS, measured it, retired the mandatory version. The specifics stay with the customers.
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FollowUpEasy
Founder. It reads your inbox, maps the relationships worth keeping, and drafts the follow-up in your voice. It never sends without you.
Live. Built and operated solo.
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Because of AI
A public registry of measured AI benefits to people. Entries are drafted every day from primary sources and checked by models from two vendors. The checks are public. No human reviews entries.
Open source. Live since October 2026.
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Writing
Dave's Quick Hits, over 1,000 subscribers. Start with Two Crashes. The Ramsay Filter is the one I use most, and it comes with a tool.
2007 to now
Widths are true to time.
- 2007 to 2017Facebook, employee #180. Launch readiness for Search through 2B daily queries.
- 2018 to 2020Wavechat, founder and CEO. An audio-first social app. It didn't work as a company.
- 2021 to 2025Vibe Capital, general partner. Deep tech and AI, started before ChatGPT.
- 2025 to nowFollowUpEasy, founder. Built and operated solo.
- Feb 2026Total Recall and The Ramsay Filter.
- Apr 2026 to nowMission Control, software engineer. Enterprise AI deployments and the customer engagements.
- Sep 2026Cookie Calm.
- Oct 2026Because of AI.
Also built
- Total Recall. Persistent memory for Claude Code. First version in three hours, launched on Hacker News. Read the case or the source.202 stars on GitHub, 2026-10-23
- The Ramsay Filter. AI slop is one failure mode, uniformity disguised as craft. The essay makes the case; the tool enforces it. Read the case, the essay or the source.Essay February 2026. MIT.
- Cookie Calm. A Chrome extension that rejects optional cookies and dismisses popups, locally, with no account. Read the case or install it.Chrome Web Store. MIT.
Also
Not work.
- In The Winds of Winter, as a character who dies. I donated $20,000 to a wolf sanctuary and a food bank for the privilege. TechCrunch has the story. The book is still coming.
- On a De La Soul record. "Anonymous Nobody".
- An extra in Mystery Science Theater 3000, episode 213, "Atlantic Rim".
- Made a hip-hop album.