David Krieger
Phoenix, Arizona
I run Quantum Forge, a studio in Phoenix that builds websites and software by hand. I studied psychology at Arizona State, which has been more useful for this work than I expected. Most of building something people use is figuring out why it matters to them.
The studio started in 2023 with one client, a hairstylist who needed a platform that would convince people to keep coming to him in a new city. Everything I could find for him was a rental, so I wrote it from scratch instead. Someone asked who built it, and that is still how most of our work comes in. My team has grown since then. We still write every line ourselves, and clients still own all of it.
Aurora
Aurora is a journal I built that notices thinking patterns in what you write, like catastrophizing or all-or-nothing thinking, and teaches the psychology behind them. It's meant to educate, not to treat. Entries are encrypted on your own device, so nobody at Aurora can read them, including me. That was the first decision I made about it.
I built it because there is a lot of psychological misinformation out there, and I wanted people to be able to learn the real thing somewhere private.
People write to me about it most weeks. One person told me:
The kinds of things I learn make me think about how I treat other people.
IT Brief wrote about the launch in April.
Outside of work
I play piano, mostly at care homes and sometimes in hotels and lounges. I've also studied Wing Chun for about ten years, the last three in professional training.
I make music too, which lives over here.
Say hello
If you want something built, or just want to talk, email me at hello@quantumforge.one. I usually answer within a day.