# Zach Waterfield > Zach Waterfield is a software engineer and angel investor in Toronto, Canada. He leads engineering at Rove Travel, invests in developer tools, AI, and B2B SaaS with Ripple Ventures and Pioneer Fund, and writes about building products. Personal site of Zach Waterfield — Head of Engineering at Rove Travel, angel investor, and endurance athlete in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Content here is first-party and written by Zach himself. Canonical URL: https://zlwaterfield.com Author: Zach Waterfield Profiles: https://github.com/zlwaterfield | https://www.linkedin.com/in/zlwaterfield/ | https://twitter.com/zlwaterfield Last generated: 2026-11-03 ## Frequently asked ### Who is Zach Waterfield? Zach Waterfield is a software engineer and angel investor based in Toronto, Canada. He is Head of Engineering at Rove Travel, and he invests in developer tools, AI, and B2B SaaS companies. ### What does Zach Waterfield do now? He leads the engineering team at Rove Travel, invests with Ripple Ventures and Pioneer Fund, trains for swim/bike/run events, and runs a founder poker game in Toronto a few times a year. He is also a new father. ### What has Zach Waterfield built or worked on? He co-founded Kopa (formerly PadPiper), a Y Combinator W19 startup making renting easier, and stepped back in 2020. He founded Zettlor, built and sold a bit.ly competitor called Toadly, was an engineer at PostHog, and was engineering lead at On Deck. Side projects include Scramble and Radar, both open source on GitHub. ### What does Zach Waterfield invest in? Developer tools, AI, and B2B SaaS, at pre-seed and seed. He invests with Ripple Ventures and Pioneer Fund, has sourced deals for Village Global and Shaan Puri’s fund across 40+ companies, and co-runs an AngelList syndicate with Ian Logan. Portfolio companies include Supabase, Cal.com, Depot, Trigger.dev, Fern, and Instant. ### What can Zach Waterfield help with? Engineering and product strategy, fundraising strategy and deck review (he has helped 100+ companies with Y Combinator prep), early startup operations, and co-founder dynamics. His consulting work covers engineering hiring, MVP builds, architecture design, product process, and build-vs-buy analysis. ### Where did Zach Waterfield study? He studied Computer Engineering at the University of Waterloo in Canada. ### Where has Zach Waterfield lived? He grew up in Canada and has lived in Lima, Porto, San Francisco, Ann Arbor, Toronto, and Vancouver. He is currently based in Toronto. ### How do I contact Zach Waterfield? Email zlwaterfield@gmail.com. He is also on GitHub, LinkedIn, and Twitter/X as @zlwaterfield. ## Pages - [Zach Waterfield](https://zlwaterfield.com/): Who Zach is, what he works on, and what he invests in. - [Writing](https://zlwaterfield.com/blog): Essays and notes on building products, startups, investing, and life. - [Consulting](https://zlwaterfield.com/consulting): Advisory work with early-stage companies: hiring, MVPs, architecture, and process. - [Endurance events](https://zlwaterfield.com/events): Completed and upcoming running and triathlon races. ## Writing - [Headless is the future. Or is it?](https://zlwaterfield.com/blog/headless-is-the-future) (2026-11-02, ~3 min): Headless software doesn't mean getting rid of interfaces. It means separating the data and functionality from how we interact with it. - [Durable and enduring software](https://zlwaterfield.com/blog/durable-and-enduring-software) (2026-10-19, ~1 min): There's a difference between software that works today and software that's designed to keep working. ## Select investments - [Supabase](https://supabase.com): Open source Postgres development platform with instant APIs and real-time subscriptions. - [Cal.com](https://cal.com): Open scheduling infrastructure for everyone. - [Doppler](https://doppler.com) (via Shaan Puri's Fund): Secrets management for developers and security teams. - [Motion](https://www.usemotion.com): AI-powered productivity assistant that automatically plans your day. - [BuildBetter](https://buildbetter.ai) (via Village Global): AI-powered customer-insights platform. - [Rose Rocket](https://roserocket.com): Modern transportation management system for trucking companies. - [Taxwire](https://taxwire.com): Automated tax compliance and filing platform for modern businesses. - [Phoenix](https://www.phoenix.ca/) (via Shaan Puri's Fund): Modern digital pharmacy platform. - [Mendral](https://mendral.com/) (acquired by Anthropic): Platform Engineering on Autopilot. - [Understudy Labs](https://understudylabs.com/): Technology studio building thoughtful software products. - [Fern](https://buildwithfern.com) (acquired by Postman): API development platform for building and maintaining SDKs. - [Instant](https://www.instantdb.com/) (acquired by OpenAI): Real-time database for modern web applications. - [Replicas](https://replicas.dev): Run coding agents inside cloud machines with your codebases, tooling, and dependencies. Delegate, iterate, review from anywhere. - [Depot](https://depot.dev) (via Pioneer Fund): Fast, secure cloud build infrastructure. - [PgDog](https://pgdog.dev/) (via Pioneer Fund): A scalable Postgres connection pooler and sharding proxy. - [Trigger.dev](https://trigger.dev) (via Pioneer Fund): Open-source background jobs and workflows. - [One](https://www.withone.ai/) (via Village Global): Trust layer for AI agents, providing authentication, access control, and audit capabilities. ## Endurance events - 5K: Ottawa Military Race (Ottawa, 2022) - 10K: Brita 10km (Toronto, 2023) - Half Marathon: Chili Half (Burlington, 2024); Toronto Marathon (Toronto, 2025) - Full Marathon: TSC Toronto Waterfront Marathon (Toronto, 2025) - Sprint Triathlon: Trimuskoka (Muskoka, 2024); Subaru Series (Guelph, 2024); Trimuskoka (Muskoka, 2026) - Olympic Triathlon: Toronto Tri Festival (Toronto, 2025) - Half Ironman: IM Haines City (Haines City, 2024); Barrelman (Niagara, 2025) - Ultra Relay: Run to Montreal (650km) (Toronto to Montreal, 2025) - Ironman: IM Ottawa (Ottawa, 2026) ## Optional - [Full text of every page](https://zlwaterfield.com/llms-full.txt): this file plus the complete body of every essay. - [RSS feed](https://zlwaterfield.com/rss.xml): new writing. - Markdown source for any post: https://zlwaterfield.com/md/blog/.md