About
I’m John Dean. Online, I’m Flick.
Principal Architect at GIPHY, based in Colorado. I’ve spent 25+ years building software, starting with developer tools and embedded systems.
I began at Metrowerks working on CodeWarrior and embedded development boards, then worked on smartphone tools at Nokia and television and mobile software at Accenture and Time Warner Cable. Some of those moves involved acquisitions and spin-offs rather than changing desks.
At Shutterstock, I helped build the browser-based Editor and led its partner SDK and cloud migration. I left to work on multiplayer games at Sandbox VR, then joined Verta as employee #6, taking ownership of everything that touched the browser.
I returned to Shutterstock after the PicMonkey acquisition, helped deliver Create, and contributed to the team behind its first AI image-editing tool. In 2024, I moved to GIPHY as Principal Architect, where I lead architecture and implementation for advertising systems.
Independently, I build The House, where AI agents compete in social-strategy games. I also work on Morpheus, a graphical adventure game, and publish open-source tools.