Today we’d like to introduce you to Dan Linn.
Hi Dan, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
Dan Linn was born in Portland, Oregon, into a poor working-class family with deep roots in both Oregon history and the protest movements of the 1970s.
His grandmother, Roberta Beryl Linn, nee Koopman, was born in Halfway, Oregon, after her grandparents settled there following the Oregon Trail. Beryl was a force: a mother of seven, a musician, a civic participant, and the kind of person whose home became a refuge for others. She ran a group home for troubled teens, with more than 500 kids passing through her house over the years. She was once voted Oregon Mother of the Year. She even ran for the state house.
The whole family had music in its bones. Her seven children sang and played instruments. Dan’s father was a musician, talented but never financially secure. Dan saw up close what it looked like for creative talent to be undervalued, used, and discarded. His father worked for a local cable company, even writing the training manual, only to eventually be laid off. That left a mark.
Dan’s grandfather, Dan II, brought another kind of influence: technical brilliance. He could fix anything. He was also quietly involved in the politics of the era. The family later discovered he had been running sound for the Black Panther Party of Oregon. The FBI was watching the family in the 1970s. In one family story, Dan’s young uncle John, around six years old, was sent outside with a plate of cookies for the FBI agents sitting in the surveillance car.
So Dan grew up with a strange inheritance: working-class grit, music, protest, technical competence, civic service, and a family mythology that made authority seem both powerful and absurd.
As a child, though, Dan did not feel powerful. He was awkward, socially underdeveloped, and often missed when other kids were making fun of him. When he moved from Catholic school to public school in third grade, he was academically ahead but socially out of step. Severe ADHD confused the faculty. He heard the phrase special education and, taking it literally, thought, I want special education. So he asked to go.
The school let him.
At parent-teacher night, his parents were baffled when he led them to his special class. The teacher there admitted they were not sure why he was there either. Testing soon made it clear: Dan did not need remedial work. He needed challenge.
Within a month, he went from special education to the top of the class. He represented the school at Math Jam and in the spelling bee. The problem had never been intelligence. The problem was that no one quite knew what to do with a kid who was bright, restless, literal, awkward, and bored.
That pattern followed him through school. He could do much of the work in his head, which made teachers suspicious. Some did not believe him until he demonstrated it live in front of the class. In math, teachers either failed him for not turning in homework or gave him A’s because he aced every test and clearly understood the material. English was the same: if an assignment interested him, he crushed it. If it did not, he often did not do it.
He knew early that he wanted a creative life, but he also knew he needed financial stability. Watching his father’s talent be squandered made him determined to find a path where creativity and earning power could coexist. Graphic design seemed like the bridge: art, technology, and a real career.
Then one summer, his uncle showed him Photoshop. It blew his mind.
Around the same time, Dan had an internship with Will Vinton Studios, the legendary Portland animation studio. Between that and Photoshop, he knew where he wanted to go. He taught himself using the Adobe Classroom in a Book series and became better at Photoshop than almost anyone around him. He took private art classes that offered Photoshop, only to find the instruction disappointing. At one point he told them, I know Photoshop better than you do. I would like my money back.
They offered him a job.
Dan was in the middle of his senior year and needed extra credits to graduate, so he dropped out, earned an Honors GED, and started teaching Photoshop.
It was the beginning of a pattern: Dan’s career would not follow the conventional path, but it would keep bending toward the place where skill, communication, and opportunity met.
The first teaching job did not last. He was young, by his own admission, and still learning how to be in the working world. A series of odd jobs followed, including waiting tables at Applebee’s. Then, in 1998, when Dan was 19, his aunt and uncle offered him a job doing color correction. His career truly began.
Also at 19, Dan’s girlfriend became pregnant, and he became a young father with shared custody of his son. He credits his son with snapping him into reality and forcing him to get serious about his career. From that point on, Dan worked relentlessly. At one point, he was holding down a day job in programming, tutoring kids in computer science on the weekends, waiting tables at night, and freelancing for multiple clients in between, often using his bus commute to squeeze in more work. That work ethic inspired the name of his first freelance company, One Man Army. He has learned a lot about work-life balance since then, but when something matters deeply to him, Dan is still willing to burn the midnight oil.
While working in design, Dan made an important discovery about himself. He could emulate styles, but he did not feel like a naturally original designer. He could reproduce, adapt, and understand visual systems, but pure design invention was not where he felt strongest.
Fortunately, the web was arriving.
Dan treated Powell’s technical bookstore like his college. He taught himself HTML, Perl, JavaScript, MySQL, and PHP. The same mind that had frustrated school systems found a home in code. The web rewarded curiosity, self-teaching, improvisation, and the ability to translate between technical and human worlds.
He earned the nickname the geek who can speak because he could explain complicated concepts clearly. That ability became one of his defining professional strengths.
From there, Dan worked at the agency Koopman Ostbo for three years, eventually becoming Director of Web Development. He then went to the Bonneville Power Administration, where he was used across the organization but primarily implemented Day Communique, the system that later became Adobe Experience Manager. It was server-side ECMAScript long before Node made that fashionable.
After BPA, Dan had a desire to stop working for the man, so he took a job at a subprime mortgage company. But in the shady world of stated-income mortgages, he quickly realized the business was not sustainable. He saw a bust coming, though he did not yet understand that he was watching the housing market crisis unfold in real time. It turned out to be much worse than working for the man, and he escaped quickly.
He freelanced for a while, then took what was supposed to be a six-week contract at Freightliner Trucks, now Daimler Trucks. That six weeks became five years, with Dan in charge of the company’s external dealer intranet.
But corporate and government red tape wore on him. Eventually, he took a pay cut to go running and screaming back to agency life. He joined Metal Toad as its sixth employee and helped grow the company to more than 50 people, eventually leaving as Director of Development. There, he worked on major properties including the Emmys and DC Comics.
By the time his daughter was born, and his wife had achieved her goal of earning a doctorate and secured a more stable job, Dan felt the ground shift beneath him. After five years at Metal Toad, the timing was finally right to build something of his own. He broke out on his own to form Hello World, a place where developers could hone their craft.
Hello World was built around a simple but deeply personal idea: developers are the heart of the company and should be the focus, not the typical sales-first growth over everything mindset. It was not just a company. It was a response to everything Dan had seen: talent wasted, people underestimated, systems that did not know how to nurture unconventional minds, and the enormous difference a good mentor can make.
Through Hello World, Dan and his team have done work for clients including Warner Bros., Nike, and Standard Insurance.
But the clearest expression of Dan’s values may be Mentorship Saturdays. For five years, he gave up his Saturdays to help people enter or level up in the development field. The group grew to more than 5,000 members and continues today. He has also served on nonprofit boards, most recently for Bridges to Change.
The through-line is hard to miss.
Dan came from a family that opened its home to hundreds of troubled kids, challenged authority, made music, fixed what was broken, and believed in showing up for people. He grew up misunderstood by school systems, then built a life around understanding systems better than they understood him. He watched talent get squandered and chose to build structures where talent could be developed. He found his way through art, code, teaching, and entrepreneurship, but the center of the story is service.
Dan Linn is a problem solver. More than that, he is someone who looks at people the way he looks at technology: not as finished products, but as systems full of potential, waiting for the right conditions to work.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
No, it definitely has not been a smooth road.
I came from a family that was rich in love, music, intelligence, and strong values, but not in money. That shaped a lot of my early life. I understood pretty young that if I wanted stability, I was going to have to build it myself.
School was also difficult for me. I am on the spectrum and had severe ADHD, which meant I often learned very differently than the system expected. I would read the material, understand it quickly, and then get bored. Once I was bored, I could become disruptive or disengaged. A lot of teachers did not know what to do with me. Some saw the potential, some saw the behavior, and some only saw the inconvenience. That created a lot of friction.
I also did not take the traditional school route. By the time I was coming up, the web was moving faster than schools could keep up with. I learned from books, from experimenting, from technical bookstores, from jobs, and from throwing myself at problems until I understood them. That path gave me a career, but it also meant I had to prove myself constantly without the usual credentials.
Becoming a father very young changed everything. I had a child at 19, which meant I had to enter the workforce immediately and take responsibility before I really had the luxury of figuring myself out. I worked multiple jobs, freelanced, tutored, waited tables, and used whatever spare time I had to build a future. It was exhausting, but it also gave me focus.
So no, it was not smooth. But I do think those struggles became part of the foundation. They taught me how to learn quickly, how to explain difficult things clearly, how to work hard when there was no safety net, and how to recognize talent in people who might not fit the standard mold.
We’ve been impressed with Hello World, but for folks who might not be as familiar, what can you share with them about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
Hello World is a software development and business technology company. We help organizations solve complicated technical problems, build new software, modernize existing systems, and maintain the applications their businesses depend on every day.
A lot of our work is with companies that have important software already in place, but need a trusted team to help improve it, stabilize it, extend it, or rescue it from years of rushed decisions. We specialize in long-term technology partnerships, custom web applications, legacy system modernization, Laravel and PHP development, Drupal, WordPress, and business process automation. In plain English, people usually come to us when technology is getting in the way of their business, and they need someone who can untangle the knot without making a bigger mess. We make order out of chaos.
What sets Hello World apart is that we are not interested in being flashy for the sake of it. We are practical, transparent, and relationship-driven. We believe clients deserve clear communication, honest options, and a team that cares about the long-term health of their business, not just the next invoice. Sometimes the best answer is a rebuild. Sometimes the best answer is a careful repair. Sometimes the best answer is telling a client not to spend money on something yet. We try to be the kind of partner who will tell the truth even when it is less convenient.
The thing I am most proud of brand-wise is that Hello World reflects my own values: communication, adaptability, authenticity, and being relentless about solving the right problem. The company was built as a place where developers can do meaningful work and grow into stronger problem solvers, but also as a place where clients can feel understood. I have seen too many talented people wasted, too many businesses confused by technology, and too many projects suffer because no one was willing to slow down and explain what was actually happening.
At our best, Hello World brings technical skill and human clarity together. We can write the code, but we can also sit with a client, understand the business reality, and help them make a good decision. That combination matters.
What I would want readers to know is that Hello World is not just a vendor. We are a long-term partner for organizations that value thoughtful technology, clear communication, and sustainable solutions. We get paid to help people solve puzzles, and we take that seriously.
What’s next?
Looking ahead, I am focused on helping companies modernize in the face of AI.
A lot of businesses know AI is going to affect them, but they are not sure what that actually means yet. Some are excited, some are nervous, and many are being sold magic tricks instead of practical solutions. I think Hello World has an opportunity to help companies approach this moment thoughtfully.
For us, modernization does not mean throwing away everything that already works, and it definitely does not mean throwing AI into every corner of the business just because it is available. AI can be incredibly useful, but it needs to be applied with judgment. Companies need to understand the real costs, risks, and dependencies before they build critical workflows around it. I also think there will be a bait and switch around token costs over time, and companies that become too reliant without understanding their exposure may get hit hard.
The real work is helping businesses look honestly at their systems, workflows, data, and processes, then figuring out where technology can remove friction, create clarity, and make people more effective. AI may be part of that, but it is not the whole story. Businesses still need good architecture, clean data, clear processes, and people who understand the difference between a useful tool and a shiny distraction.
I am especially interested in helping companies with older systems prepare for what is coming. Many organizations have years of business logic trapped in legacy software, spreadsheets, manual processes, or institutional knowledge that only a few people understand. That creates risk, but it also creates opportunity. With the right strategy, those companies can modernize without losing the wisdom built into their existing systems.
What I am looking forward to is building Hello World into the kind of partner companies can trust during that transition. We make order out of chaos, and I think that is going to matter more than ever. The future is not just about adopting new tools. It is about helping people make good decisions in a world where the tools are changing very quickly.
Pricing:
- Consulting – $350/hr
- Development – $230-$300/hr
- Projects range from $2000 to $1 million+
Contact Info:
- Website: https://helloworlddevs.com
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/danlinn
