Todd Fast

Entrepreneur

I want to invent something cool.

Conga (my baby), IFTTT (the Web as your API), Key Ring (great business model(s))

Most Frustrating: The existential angst.
Most Rewarding: Putting innovation into motion.

1. Not seeking enough feedback. 2. Paying too much attention to feedback.

1. The market, like nature, is not fair by any measure.
2. If you waste something, you'll wish later you had what you wasted.
3. It's what you *don't* do that defines you.

Senior technical leader and entrepreneur with a penchant for leading-edge product concepts and development.

Previously, I served as chief architect of Sun Microsystems' Platform as a Service (PaaS) cloud offerings, and CTO and founding principal of zembly.com, Sun's cloud application platform and browser-based social development environment. I also co-authored the Twitter Data proposal [http://twitterdata.org].

Prior to zembly, I was Chief Architect of SOA, XML, and Java Enterprise Tools at Sun, where I shepherded the integration of the SeeBeyond Technology Corp. acquisition into Sun's developer tools platforms. As part of my responsibilities, I coordinated and oversaw the activity of forty-plus engineers and architects across four geographical regions. During this time, I also conceived and shipped the world's first real-time developer collaboration platform in a mainstream IDE, including features like integrated presence, code-aware chat, pair programming at a distance, simultaneous co-editing, and remote builds.

More recently, I founded the popular Java Native Access (JNA) library, a Java-only bridge to native code from the Java VM which now powers core functionality in popular frameworks like JRuby and Jython.

Prior to Sun, I held positions as Principal Consultant and Engineer with NetDynamics, Inc., the company that invented and popularized the application server. There, I worked with a diverse range of companies ranging from Silicon Valley startups to Fortune 100 enterprises architecting and building both enterprise and e-commerce websites.

As a senior architect and technical leader, I have deep expertise in cloud and web application development; app server runtimes; developer tools, frameworks, and platforms; and am a veteran at leading engineering teams through the tricky process of shipping ground-breaking, innovative products. I am a co-author and JavaOne Rock Star, hold four patents, and am named on more than ten patents pending.