# Colin Armstrong

> Colin Armstrong is the founder and CEO of Paragraph (paragraph.com), the media engine for early-stage startups. Before Paragraph he led anti-abuse and privacy engineering teams at Google and worked on payments at Coinbase. This is his personal site, armstr.ng: his writing, work history, side projects, press and photography.

- Founder and CEO of [Paragraph](https://paragraph.com), which was incorporated on April 7, 2022.
- In May 2024 Paragraph acquired [Mirror](https://mirror.xyz), the onchain publishing platform founded by Denis Nazarov, and raised $5 million from USV and Coinbase Ventures alongside the deal; Paragraph has raised $7 million in total. Colin ran Mirror as its CEO until Paragraph retired it in September 2025 and moved its writers and posts to Paragraph.
- Google, 2017–2022: senior software engineer and manager on communications anti-abuse. He built Google's first on-device anti-abuse SDK and led work in its privacy working group.
- Coinbase, 2015–2016: payments engineer. He helped launch Coinbase in Canada and improved its Bitcoin private-key signing.
- Angel investor in early-stage startups such as Farcaster, Daimo and Layer3, and in a few venture funds.
- Side projects:
  - [heade.rs](https://heade.rs): Domain and IP lookup with live routes and latency
  - [Draftside](https://draftside.ai): Private writing editor with on-device AI
  - [Council](https://council.armstr.ng): CLI that runs three AI models and synthesizes one answer
- Lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. Photographs wildlife, landscapes and the night sky.
- Email: colin@armstr.ng. Profiles: X [@colinarms](https://x.com/colinarms), Farcaster [@colin](https://farcaster.xyz/colin), GitHub [seeARMS](https://github.com/seeARMS), LinkedIn [colinarms](https://linkedin.com/in/colinarms).

Every page on this site has a Markdown version: add `.md` to its address (`/index.md` for the home page), or ask for the page itself with an `Accept: text/markdown` header.

## Pages

- [Home](https://armstr.ng/index.md): who Colin is, recent writing and work
- [Projects & work](https://armstr.ng/projects.md): side projects, full work history, podcasts and press
- [Writing](https://armstr.ng/writing.md): every post, by year
- [Contact](https://armstr.ng/contact.md): email and profiles

## Writing

- [The data spectrum: portable, usable & interoperable](https://armstr.ng/writing/data-spectrum.md): Oct 15, 2024. Moving beyond just exportable data.
- [Wallets instead of emails for identity](https://armstr.ng/writing/identity-wallets-over-emails.md): Jan 14, 2023. Why open & permissionless systems can lead to better identity.
- [Spending time deliberately](https://armstr.ng/writing/spending-time-deliberately.md): Oct 23, 2022. Thoughts on doing my best work.
- [Personal automation with Huginn using Slack, Docker and GCP](https://armstr.ng/writing/personal-automation-with-huginn-using-slack-docker-and-gcp.md): Sep 20, 2022.

## Optional

- [Photography](https://armstr.ng/photography.md): wildlife, landscape and astrophotography, with camera settings
- [RSS feed](https://armstr.ng/feed.xml): new posts