I've been meaning to do this for a long time. Longer than I care to admit.
The old site was built in 2018. It was a photo gallery, more or less — a place to put my photography, link out to a few things, and let people know I existed on the internet. It did that job. But somewhere between 2018 and now, the gap between what that site said about me and what I'm actually doing got wide enough to be embarrassing.
What the old site was
Honest answer: a time capsule. The 2018 version of Van Murray was finishing up the AppSmart chapter and figuring out what came next. The site reflected that moment — some business content, some aviation, some photos of Smith Mountain Lake, a few blog posts from the early cloud days that I never took down.
It wasn't bad. It just stopped being true.
Why it needed to change
In 2026, the thing I'm building is Mahiri — an autonomous business operating system. The company I'm flying with is Aeolus. The chapter I'm in is genuinely different from anything that came before it: AI, automation, founders building with systems that actually run their businesses for them. This isn't theoretical. We're doing it.
None of that was on my old site. A person could land on vanmurray.com, poke around for five minutes, and walk away thinking I was a telecom channel exec who liked drones and bass fishing. Which, sure — but that's not the point anymore.
The site had stopped being a door and become a wall. I needed to fix that.
What's different now
This site is built on the Mahiri stack. That's not incidental — it's the whole point. What we're building at Mahiri is meant to run businesses like this: properties that stay current, content that gets made and published systematically, a founder brand that actually reflects what the founder is doing.
Using it on my own site means I have to eat my own cooking. That keeps me honest.
The structure changed. There's a Recommends section now — a curated list of the tools, books, and gear that actually make a difference in my work and life. Not affiliate-bait, not a sponsored page. Just the things I use and trust. The blog has a real purpose again: thinking out loud about building, flying, the outdoors, and the intersection of AI and human judgment in business.
I also went through the archives. Not everything from 2009–2019 survives the cut. A blog post about the original iPad kneeboard doesn't need to follow me into 2026. What does survive are the posts that still say something true — the aviation stories, the community work, the pieces where I was actually trying to think through a problem.
What stays the same
The photography. That's not going anywhere.
I've been taking pictures since before I was flying planes. It's how I see the world — light, composition, the moment right before something changes. Some of the best photos on this site are from cockpits. Some are from the lake. Some are from places I'm not sure I could find again on a map. That part of who I am doesn't have a business case, and I'm fine with that.
The other thing that stays the same: I write in my own voice. No ghost-written SEO content, no content calendar built around search volume alone. If I don't have something worth saying, I don't publish. This site has always been direct communication, and that's not changing.
What this site is for now
If you're a founder thinking about Mahiri — what it is, whether it might fit what you're building — this is a good place to start understanding who I am and how I think.
If you're interested in Aeolus and what we're building in aviation technology, I want to hear from you.
If you're a potential partner, a speaker booker, or someone who just wants to connect — there's a contact form and I actually respond.
And if you've been following vanmurray.com for years and remember the AppSmart days, the NeoCloud days, the kneeboard posts — welcome to the next chapter. It's a good one.