Cover photo for David H. Hagan

David H. Hagan

Hey, there 👋. I'm David, the founder and CEO of QuantAQ, a startup working to make actionable air quality information more accessible. I spun the company out of my Ph.D. work at MIT where I wrote my dissertation on "Measuring ambient air quality using low-cost sensors".

In my spare time, I advise startups, do some data science consulting, and am a topic editor for the Journal of Open Source Software.

I'm always happy to grab a coffee and chat about technology, startups, and/or science. I can be reached on LinkedIn or at david.hagan@quant-aq.com.
New

What I'm up to - January 2023

✨ Highlights of last month • At QuantAQ, we shipped out our largest-ever order, had our biggest month and quarter in top-line revenue, and completed our best year. • I spent some time planning out personal OKRs as an alternative approach to my typical New Years' Resolution - I'm hoping this will lead to results that are more easily trackable. 🤔 Things to share • An article in the MIT Tech Review about Make Sunsets, a company that intends to cool the planet by pumping Sulfate particles into the stratosphere (a very, very bad and stupid idea in my opinion). I may write more about this at some point, but the tldr is that (1) this is an incredibly unethical thing to do and (2) VCs have a responsibility to do due diligence with respect to ethics and impact on unintended parties. While there isn't much I can do personally, I will certainly not ever take a meeting from VCs who lack basic ethics like boost.vc and Pioneer Fund have shown here and will encourage other climate entrepreneurs to perform their own due diligence on firms they may take money from. 📫 What I'm up to this month • Working hard at QuantAQ to ensure 2023 is off to a hot start. If you're looking for a job in sales, software, or electro/mechanical engineering, reach out or check out our careers page. • We have at least 1 new employee starting this month - an opportunity to revisit our onboarding docs and processes • I was recently introduced to Retool, so will likely spend some time playing around to see if it can help reduce a lot of custom internal tooling and spreadsheets • The early part of the year is always hard for me in Boston (I'm not a cold-weather person), so I'm hoping to find some opportunities to spend time outside 📍 Where I'll be (Let me know if we overlap!) • I have no planned trips in January as of now! 📖 What I'm reading • Measure What Matters by John Doerr
Read more →