Writing

Plain talk on building, AI, and what actually works.

March 31, 2026Site Rebuild

Why I Rebuilt vanmurray.com

The gap between what my old site said about me and what I'm actually doing got wide enough to be embarrassing. So I rebuilt it on the Mahiri stack.

March 30, 2026Building in Public

Where Mahiri actually stands: what exists, what we're proving, and what Phase 2 looks like.

March 30, 2026Strategy

The ops grind is a structural problem. Two things have changed that make it solvable.

March 30, 2026AI & Building

There's a specific kind of exhaustion that comes from running a small business. It's not the hard work — it's the relentless cognitive overhead.

January 2024Community

Honored to receive the Hallam-ICS 2023 Community Service Award — and $10,000 in funding for Clean Jordan Lake.

February 9, 2019Aviation

I built a free Google Sheets drone pilot logbook because I couldn't find a good one. Flight log, UAS info, and maintenance tracking.

January 2019Business

Crain's Raleigh-Durham profile: NeoCloud CEO Van Murray on entrepreneurship, the cloud, and why Raleigh is the right place to build.

January 2019Security

If you haven't enabled MFA on your accounts, do it today. And check haveibeenpwned.com to see if your data has been leaked.

January 2019Outdoors

Fished the Warriors on the Water veteran support tournament at Jordan Lake. Weighed in 3 bass for 11 lbs 5 oz.

May 2017Recognition

Proud to be part of the Triangle Business Journal's Top 40 Under 40 Class of 2017.

January 2015Design Philosophy

Tanjun (単純) is the Japanese word for simplicity. It's the design principle behind everything I build.

June 13, 2013Aviation

A free cloud-based pilot logbook template built in Google Sheets — access from any device, automatic totals, real-time sharing.

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