Interested in digital products? Want to get a feel for what a day in the life looks like on the Di team? You've come to the right place. Every quarter, we will be interviewing a member of our cohort for your reading pleasure. This time around, we are chatting with David Woody. You can follow David on Twitter at @davidjwoody and GitHub at davidwoody.

J: Hi there! Why don’t we start off by delving into what your role is at Differential.
D: I’m a partner at Differential and as a part of the leadership team I run our tech, or what we now call delivery, team [CTO role]. On the business side, I do a lot of the financial work - I create financial models to help us run the business, and make sure we have the right information to make decisions around hiring, growth, pricing, etc.

J: How and when did you become interested in the kind of work you do?
D: Well, I think I’ve always been interested in it… I’ve always been entrepreneurial. Even as a kid I wanted to start my own business. That idea started at a young age, and then was fostered by my parents over time. On the technical side, I’ve always been interested in technology and building things - building apps - taking something from the idea stage to reality.

J: How did your career path lead you to Differential?
D: So, I think it goes back to 2013. I was looking to start my own business and I wanted to build a SaaS product and was seeking mentorship. I got connected with Tim Metzner [of Differential] and Josh Owens [formerly of Differential] through an Unpolished event at Crossroads - which in the early days was more of a meet up and later turned into a conference. I was talking to Tim about my idea and talking to Josh about the tech stack I was going to use and Josh was like, “Hold on, let me stop you right there. You should really take a look at Meteor.” That is what launched me into getting really excited about Meteor and the future of JavaScript. I went back to them a couple of months later and showed off what I had built so far. I got an offer to do contract work for Differential before it was even a dev shop. Later that year, while still doing contract work for Di, Colin Flynn [of Differential] and I started talking about me coming on as a partner and officially starting Di as a dev shop. I came on as a partner a couple months later in 2014.

J: Differential hires entrepreneurial minds to help solve the problems of intrapreneurs – what is your first memory of being entrepreneurial?
D: Probably the earliest, funniest story I can think of revolves around me being curious as a kid. I remember when my family got our very first computer delivered. After it was delivered, our living room was full of a bunch of boxes, but my dad was going to be out of town for a few days and we were explicitly told not to touch anything until my dad got home. Of course curiosity got the best of me and I ended up setting it all up by myself and started using it.

J: Tell us a little about working almost exclusively with Intrepreneur clients.
D: The great thing about working with Intrepreneurs is that you get to work on all of the cutting edge stuff that really has the potential to be massively impactful for these organizations. Not only is it fun to go after bold and big ideas, but you get to run hard and fast after them.

J: What do you like (or love) about working here?
D: The people. I love working with the team at Di who are all very entrepreneurial minded, ambitious, and smart - and who value culture and appreciate freedom and flexibility at the same time. Culture is a function of people.

J: Part of the Differential team is remote - in your experience, are there advantages and/or difficulties to remote teamwork?
D: I would say the disadvantages are minimized in our experience just because we’ve been able to leverage technology to get over some of the hurdles. We use software like Screenhero, Zoom, Slack, and Github to keep in sync. So from my perspective, it doesn't matter where you are. As long as you have an internet connection and are responsive, you can really work from anywhere.

J: What’s streaming through your earbuds while you are working?
D: 1 of 2 things: it's either Guns N' Roses 'Appetite for Destruction' or any of the deadmau5 albums on repeat.

J: And last, but certainly not least - favorite coffee or lunch spot near the office?
D: Currito. Every day.