N° 01Curiosity
Relentless curiosity.
I dig into problems until I understand them well enough to build something worth using. If I’m not learning, I’m not interested.
Home / About
01 · Who runs the shop
I’m Conner.
I build things.
Not because someone handed me a spec and a deadline — because something was broken, or missing, or could be better, and the curiosity wouldn’t let me leave it alone.
Based inColumbia, Tennessee
Remote for the rest
TeamFour-person core
Scales past 8
Remote for the rest
TeamFour-person core
Scales past 8
The long version.
ShirePath started less than a year ago, but the work started long before that. I’ve been building software professionally for years — C#/.NET, React, TypeScript, Next.js, Python — across workers’ comp brokerage, donor data pipelines, youth sports operations, and whatever problem landed in front of me. At some point I realized the pattern: I keep ending up as the person who looks at a broken system and says “I’ll just build something better.”
So that’s what ShirePath is. A studio where I build software and systems for real problems — usually ones I’m facing myself. I run operations for a youth flag football league in Southern California, so I built the platform to manage it. I wanted Bible reading to feel like an RPG, so I built that. I wanted to send my family a Christmas card that actually meant something, so I built an AI app that writes and narrates personalized stories. Right now I’m wiring a Whoop band to a glucose monitor to figure out what my body actually does with the food I eat.
Curiosity → obsession → “why doesn’t this exist?”
→ build it. The pattern is always the same.
→ build it. The pattern is always the same.
I’m not trying to build the next unicorn. I’m trying to build a portfolio of things that matter — to me, to the communities I’m part of, and to the people who have the same problems I do. Some of them will become real products. Some of them will teach me something and end up on the Shelf. Both outcomes are fine.
When I’m not building software, I’m restoring a 1985 GMC K2500 square body, leading F3 workouts at 5am, cooking whatever the smoker asks for, or figuring out how to be a good dad to my daughter alongside my wife Erin.
If you’ve got a problem that won’t leave you alone and you want to build something about it, you’ve found the right crew.
02 · Operating principles
Four things
I don’t bend on.
None of this means skipping the plan — it means planning by building instead of billing you for slides first. If you want a partner who scopes carefully, ships real software early, and tells you the truth about what’s working, that’s exactly what I do.
N° 02Craft
Built to last.
I’ve felt the pain of shipping fast without architecture. Quality matters. Clean code matters. Doing it right the second time matters more than shipping fast the first.
N° 03Honesty
Radical transparency.
This whole site is transparency. Here’s what I’ve built, here’s what failed, here’s what I’m working on now. No smoke. No decks.
N° 04Posture
Builder over seller.
I’d rather build the thing than sell you a plan for it — you’ll see working software early and often, not a stack of slides. Sleeves up. Let’s make it.
03 · The core
A four-person core.
Scales past eight.
The core is four: me and the three below. When the work calls for it, we scale past eight without missing a beat. These are the people I build with: partners, mentors, and a few of my best friends who happen to be dangerously good at what they do.
Conner Contreras
Operator · builder· Founder
Takes the first pass and owns the ship date. Full-stack across every build on this site, and the constant the rest of the core plugs into.
TC
Toby Chappell
Data wizard· Lifelong friend
One of my best friends, and the person I call when the data layer stops making sense. Co-building on several active projects — he makes the pipes quiet so everything else can be loud.
CH
Cole V. Hambright
Partner · Jettison Air· Lifelong friend
Partnering up on Jettison Air — role and scope still forming. Another one I’ve known forever, which is the only way I know how to start a company.
Patrick Taylor
AI expert· Advisor on most projects
Lives on the cutting edge of what’s possible with AI and is generous about dragging the rest of us along. If it involves models, prompts, or agents, I’ve probably run it by Patrick first.
Core of four, scales past eight when the build calls for it.If we’ve built something together and you’re not here yet, ping me.
04 · Life inventory
Where the time goes.
ShirePath is one part of a full life— that’s the point.
01FAMILY
Erin, the kid, the dogs.
The why behind everything else. Every project has to survive the “is this worth the hours I’d otherwise spend with them” test. Most don’t.
02WORK
ShirePath + AFL ops.
Running league operations for 1,500 families while building software for the operation and whatever else has caught my attention this month.
03FAITH
Sundays, daily.
Shows up in the work — see Biblical Battle Plans — but mostly it just shows up as how I try to live. Quiet, consistent, not performative.
04F3
5am. Rain or shine.
Free men’s fitness in the dark. It’s where half my best ideas land, and where I remember there’s a whole life outside the screen.
05READING
Always mid-book.
Usually a few going at once. A good share of what I end up building started as a line in someone else’s book.
06COMMUNITY
Rooted in Columbia.
Partnering with the people and businesses around town. The best problems to solve are the ones close enough to drive to.
05 · Receipts
Years in the craft.
The short version: I’ve spent the last several years building real software for real operations — not just side projects. ShirePath is where all of that shows up in one place.
2025 →
ShirePath Solutions — founded. Operating League-OS, Battle Plans, Story Card, and everything on this site.
Columbia, TN
2022 →
Integrations engineering — three-plus years moving data between systems that refuse to talk. Glorified plumbing, and I love it.
Full-time
2018 →
Advantage Flag League — operations and platform. 1,500 families, one full-time operator, a lot of Sundays.
Yorba Linda, CA
Ongoing
Donor data pipelines — odder-river. ETL that people’s missions depend on.
Contract
Earlier
C# / .NET / Blazor shops — where I learned that architecture is a feature and that “we’ll refactor later” is a lie.
Various
Tools on the benchRev. 07·26
Front
Next.jsReactTypeScriptTailwindVite
Back
NodePostgresDrizzleFirebaseC# / .NETPython
Pay / infra
StripeAWSVercelNeonTwilio
AI
Claude
Happily used
LinearNotionFigmaGitHubCursor
Got a problem that
won’t leave you alone?
Bring it to the bench.
Where the bench sitsColumbia, Tennessee
Remote for the rest of it.
Remote for the rest of it.
How to reach meconner@shirepathsolutions.com
What to tell meWhat’s broken. What you’ve tried.
What “done” would look like.
What “done” would look like.
What I’ll tell youAn honest read, usually within 48 hours — how I’d approach it, what it’d take, and where I can help most.