About Our Founder
John David Marx
Same sand, bigger ideas. Webspinner’s founder, in the sandbox where the work gets done.
Why Webspinner
John founded Webspinner LLC in 2024 to come full circle, back to invention: AI that people own outright instead of renting. Everything Webspinner builds starts from that idea.
The open-source community has already bestowed on all mankind the work of millions of its members. The growing availability of open-weight AI models complements that contribution with minds you can use locally, free of charge.
— John David Marx, 6 October 2026
The machine after the computer
Webspinner calls the new kind of personal machine it is building the Mentor.
The Mentor does not replace the computer; it builds on it, adding a layer of cognition that can take what you intend and bring the right models, knowledge and tools together to do it. The Inference Desktop on the screen behind him is where that comes to life: Create your AI, and own it.
The sandbox is real
The machines in the sand are the ones Webspinner’s own AI runs on: a Mac Studio, two EdgeXpert computers, a router and a drive. They sit in his office in Portland, Oregon, not in someone else’s cloud.
Forty-five years of building
John taught himself to program at sixteen, on a Burroughs B-1900. His first technology job was the night shift at Cook Children’s Hospital in Fort Worth, Texas. He studied technology and philosophy at TCU and founded his first company, PC Company, in 1986, before he graduated.
In 1989 he built CGL, a fourth-generation language that generated complete C applications for Unix, and founded The Open Systems Group on it, in his garage. It made the Inc. 500 in 1996, at number 127, and later spun off Para-Docs Software. From 2012 to 2017 he was at Red Hat, rising from consulting to lead business development for financial services, and since 2020 he has been a Principal at Cognizant, leading enterprise AI-SDLC transformation.
I’ve spent 45 years watching technology separate the people who understand it from those who don’t. I’d like to spend the next chapter changing that.
— John David Marx