Darren Dawson

Product Lead

Fullstack Developer

UCSC Class of 2020

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Hello there!

I'm Darren and I build products for esports

I'm the backend dev and in-house designer for the lean dev team over at Panda. My day to day involves making decisions that determine both the technical and product directions for all of our technical projects, be they consumer facing or internal tooling.

For the past year, I've been leading product for the Panda Cup - Nintendo's first ever officially licensed Super Smash Bros. Circuit. I've focused the team on rethinking how historical data can be automatically integrated into our broadcasts to help build storylines for our commentators and our viewers to grab hold of.

I wear a lot of hats over at Panda, but at the end of the day they all come back to making smart product decisions to delight the Smash community.

As a Fullstack Dev

Languages

  • Python
  • Javascript
  • SQL
  • GraphQL

Frontend Frameworks

  • React.js
  • Next.js

Backend Stuff

  • Express.js
  • Redis

Databases

  • Postgres
  • MySQL
  • SQLite

Cloud Hosting (AWS)

  • Elastic Beanstalk
  • Relational Database Service
  • Route 53

In the Design Department

Tools of the Trade

  • Figma
  • Gimp
  • Pen & Paper

Fairly Well Educated

University of California, Santa Cruz

September 2016 - June 2020, 3.4 GPA

  • B.S. in Computer Science
  • B.S. in Technology & Information Management

Y-Combinator, Startup School

July 2018 - November 2018, Advisory Track

  • Launched IndieOutreach during the program

"What would you say ya do here?" "What would you say ya do here?" "What would you say ya do here?" "What would you say ya do here?" "What would you say ya do here?" "What would you say ya do here?" "What would you say ya do here?" "What would you say ya do here?" "What would you say ya do here?" "What would you say ya do here?" "What would you say ya do here?" "What would you say ya do here?" "What would you say ya do here?" "What would you say ya do here?" "What would you say ya do here?" "What would you say ya do here?"

"What would you say ya do here?" "What would you say ya do here?" "What would you say ya do here?" "What would you say ya do here?" "What would you say ya do here?" "What would you say ya do here?" "What would you say ya do here?" "What would you say ya do here?" "What would you say ya do here?" "What would you say ya do here?" "What would you say ya do here?" "What would you say ya do here?" "What would you say ya do here?" "What would you say ya do here?" "What would you say ya do here?" "What would you say ya do here?"

Work Experience

Fullstack Developer

Database Administrator

Cloud Architect

Product Engineer

Website Designer

Frontend Developer

"DM @darren on Discord" Guy

@

Working to make Smash a better esport

September 2020 - Present

I build tools that make the complex simple

PGstats.com

website

React.js + Next.js

Express.js

Python

PostgreSQL

Redis

AWS RDS

AWS EB

Figma

The #1 resource for the competitive Smash Bros community

Making it easier than ever for players around the world to make data driven decisions about how to improve at events

  • Hosts tournament data for 500k Smash Bros Ultimate and Melee players, including 6m sets played across 75k events
  • Offers in-depth analysis on players to help them identify trends in their performance and prepare for their next event
  • Indexes over 35k vods from sets played in bracket and connects them to player profiles
  • Our writers publish articles daily with deep dives into interesting stats drawn from our dataset

Conjure Forms

githubnpmwebsite

React.js

NPM

Predictable, programmable JSON forms for React.js

Makes collecting complex user input as simple as `npm install`

  • Bundle related questions into the same JSON object and reuse it as a template
  • Ask questions (or templated groups of questions) and get results as a list
  • Conditionally show questions based on answers to previous questions
  • Have users select available options from dropdowns

Fill out the Survey...

Startup Application Form

Winter 2020

Company

Company name:

Company url, if any:

If you have a demo, what's the url? For non-software, demo can be a video.

(Please don't password protect it; just use an obscure url)

Describe your company in 50 characters or less.

What is your company going to make?

Where do you live now, and where would the company be based after YC?

(List as City A, Country A / City B, Country B.)

Contact

Email address of the founder who is filling out this application:

Phone number(s):

Founders

Please provide the email addresses of the other cofounders in the startup. No need to add yours again. Founders must have at least 10% equity in the company. We will send an email to each founder to fill out additional information about themselves.

Email Address of Cofounder

Please enter the url of a 1 minute unlisted (not private) YouTube or Youku video introducing the founder(s). This video is an important part of the application. (Follow the video guidelines.)

How many founders are on the team?

(Fill out this number of founder profiles)

Category

Which category best applies to your company?

Progress

How far along are you?

How long have each of you been working on this? How much of that has been full-time? Please explain.

Are people using your product?

Do you have revenue?

If you've applied previously with the same idea, how much progress have you made since the last time you applied? Anything change?

If you have already participated or commited to participate in an incubator, "accelerator" or "pre-accelerator" program, please tell us about it.

Idea

Why did you pick this idea to work on? Do you have domain expertise in this area? How do you know people need what you're making?

What's new about what you're making? What substitutes do people resort to because it doesn't exist yet (or they don't know about it?)

Who are your competitors, and who might become competitors? Who do you fear most?

What do you understand about your business that other companies in it just don't get?

How do or will you make money? How much could you make?

(We realize you can't know precisely, but give your best estimate.)

How will you get users? If your idea is the type that faces a chicken-and-egg problem in the sense that it won't be attractive to users till it has a lot of users (e.g. a marketplace, a dating site, an ad network), how will you overcome that?

Equity

Have you incorporated, or formed any legal entity (like an LLC) yet?

Have you taken any investment yet?

If you have not formed the company yet, describe the planned equity ownership breakdown among the founders, employees and any other proposed stockholders. If there are multiple founders, be sure to give the proposed equity of each founder.

(This question is as much for you as us.)

Please provide any other relevant information about the structure or formation of the company.

Legal

Are any of the founders covered by noncompetes or intellectual property agreements that overlap with your project? If so, please explain.

Who writes code, or does other technical work on your product? Was any of it done by a non-founder? Please explain.

Is there anything else we should know about your company?

(Pending lawsuits, cofounders that have left, etc.)

Others

If you had any other ideas you considered applying with, please list them. One may be something we've been waiting for. Often when we fund people it's to do something they list here and not in the main application.

Please tell us something surprising or amusing that one of you has discovered.

(The answer need not be related to your project.)

Curious

What convinced you to apply to Y Combinator? Did someone encourage you to apply?

How did you hear about Y Combinator?

Please ensure that this application is complete and all founders have filled out their profiles before submitting your application for review. The answer to this question must match the number of profiles filled. Once you submit your application, it will be reviewed, regardless of whether the deadline has passed or not.

And see the changes in JSON

{
    yc_application: {
        company: {
            name: "",
            url: "",
            demo_url: "",
            description: "",
            will_make: "",
            location: ""
        },
        contact: {
            founder_email: "",
            phone_numbers: ""
        },
        founders: {
            intro_video: "",
            num_founders: ["1"],
            emails: [
                {
                    email: ""
                }
            ]
        },
        cateogry: {
            type: []
        },
        progress: {
            how_far_along: "",
            time_working: "",
            has_users: [],
            has_revenue: [],
            previous_applications: "",
            accelerators: ""
        },
        idea: {
            why_this: "",
            whats_new: "",
            competitors: "",
            unique_insight: "",
            money: "",
            user_acquisition: ""
        },
        equity: {
            incorporated: [],
            investments: [],
            equity_breakdown: "",
            corporate_structure: ""
        },
        legal: {
            noncompetes: "",
            technical_work: "",
            noteworthy: ""
        },
        others: {
            other_ideas: "",
            discovery: ""
        },
        curious: {
            reason_for_application: "",
            heard_of_yc: ""
        }
    }
}

IndieOutreach

website

React.js

Express.js

Python

MySQL

SQLite

AWS RDS

AWS EB

A search engine that makes game PR on Twitch a breeze

Matches indie games to the streamers who are historically most likely to play them on-stream

  • Uses the Twitch and IGDB APIs to build up a history of what games streamers have played and when they played them
  • Game devs describe their game intuitively (ie: it's a voxel game and is like Mario 3D World meets God of War and its a Kickstarter)
  • IndieOutreach sorts through all of its recorded streams and presents streamers that fit the specified description
  • Enables filtering by useful metrics for indie devs like 'variety streamer' or 'plays kickstarter games'