Hi, my name is Brett van Zuiden.
I am a maker, a hobbyist, and an optimist.
I live in Oakland.
About
- Head of Product at Once
- Former CIO at Summit Public Schools
- Former PM Lead at Clever, Outschool
- Founding CEO of Filestack
- Studied EECS, Math, and Mechanical Engineering at MIT
Posts
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Feed the AI Beast
A common pitfall for junior product managers is “feeding the beast”: over-focusing on keeping their engineers busy. As AI coding tools empower more people to essentially product manage coding agents, many people are falling into this same pitfall of focusing on tokens used over value delivered. ›
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Teachers as craftspeople
As much as people proclaim schools operate a “factory model of education,” a teacher in a classroom today is more akin to a 16th century cobbler than a worker in a Nike shoe factory, for better and for worse. ›
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Measure schools on student growth
School accountability frameworks measure schools on the aggregate performance of current students on standardized tests rather than the growth students demonstrate between years. As a result, “school quality” measures can fluctuate up or down based on the preparedness of incoming students even if the actual instructional quality remains constant. ›
Projects
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Treehouse
My dad and I built a treehouse on my parent’s property
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UpNext
A glanceable ePaper calendar for your desk
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Internet Radio
Streaming music through a vintage 1930's radio
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SoundByte
A speaker with a computer inside and a uniquely physical interface
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Exploring Epicycles
Using the fourier transform in art
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Uber Button
Summon a car with a big red button.