It all starts off with me leaving AOL looking for a change. Don’t get me wrong - AOL was a great place to work, but I really wanted to give the startup life a try. I mean, this is The Valley after all.

So the hunt began.

I spent several weeks going on interviews, meeting with people, and each time, I’d come home telling my wife things like…

Eh, I don’t know. They don’t have a business model.

They swore their product had no problems, even though I called out half a dozen…

Wow. I should have walked out of that interview - that guy pretty much spent the interview talking about his awesome career path.

After awhile, I started to think, “Wait. Is it me? Am I being too picky?”

Then early one morning, Mimmie and I are stopped at a red light and I go into emo mode.

For some reason, this weather reminds me of this one day I was playing catch with Dad.

After my 3 second emo timeout, we started laughing. At this point, I probably shared 1000 random memories with her, as a result of passing by some street sign.

Then it hit me… Why not build something that would let people talk about their fondest memories, with their close friends and family, or with the world? Why not build a platform where I can send my daughter letters, and have them be sent to her as a gift when she’s 18?

And so it began.

The moment we stepped into the bookstore, I was Paper53’ing my ideas. My mind started racing around what I could technically do myself, and what I’d probably need help with. Can I front the server costs? Damn it, I knew I should have prototyped more than an iOS calculator app!

A drip later, my sketches were complete ( don’t go stealing my things designers! )

I quickly realized how fun this was going to be, but I had some interviews lined up for the coming days, so I figured I’d finish that “round”, and then look at devoting time to “Memories”.

Friday comes around and I’m grabbing a bite at the Delessio, ready for an interview. In comes an email from a “Matthew Johnson” talking about how he’s a co-founder for some startup called ThisLife, and how he heard about me from Sol and Mimmie.

I casually type in thislife.com on my iPad and hit Go…

Holy Geeze! (keeping it PG) I couldn’t believe what I was seeing as I skimmed  through their website.

They were not only building a cohesive product that was in the realm of Memories, but they were all about the design, too!

My wife calls me 10 minutes later saying that I should be expecting an email from Matt and I’m all like “Seriously!? Did you see what they’re building!? It’s in the direction of Memories!” ( no, seriously, I was just as excited as my excessive use of “!” makes it seem )

To be honest, I went to my interview after lunch, but spent half the time my interview time wondering if ThisLife’s app was as good as their website.

I go home, play with it, and I’m sold. I email Matt and he responds back immediately checking to see if I could meet him the next morning.

He wants to meet on a Saturday morning! This guy takes his business seriously! ( i like )

Long story longer, we met a couple of times, I was given an offer, and I joined as their first/only product manager.

I’ve been working at ThisLife for half a year now, and without starting my own company, I’ve gotten to work on a steroidal version of Memories. What was going to be a text based product with a couple of photos per Memory, is now a photo based product with the ability to add text. And instead of working by myself, I work with a small team of passionate people that are experts at what they do, and are a blast to be around.

If my story bored you, I’m sorry! I thought it was worth the write if only to be something Mimmie and I can laugh at in the future… and because my blog has become stale. (half joke)

Morals of the story:

• You don’t have to build awesomeness on your own.
• It pays to be patient.
• Be thankful to those that support you - thanks Mimmie and Sol!

Cheers,

~R

I was gone on paternity leave for 2 weeks and spent the weekend bracing myself for all the massive changes that may have taken place. Was that feature still a thing? Were those tweaks pushed to staging? Did that email go live?

I think back on what 2 weeks meant on some of my projects @AOL and remember how I could probably just continue where I left off. In fact, I feel like I’d see more change in 2 weeks @ThisLife vs. 2 months on those projects.

Kinda cool. Kinda scary.

If you’re like me, you pride yourself with the MagSafe adapters you have; one or two permanently located in each room of your house.

And if you’re like me, you’re pissed that future MacBooks will now rely on a new, non-backwards compatible, MagSafe 2.

Instead of buying an entirely new set, I’m hoping someone comes out with an adapter that’ll let us use our MagSafe 1 adapters with the new MacBooks.

Kickstarter. Where you at?

You launched and showcased these beautifully engineered machines in your Apple Stores, but failed to display them with Retina pushing wallpapers. Seriously? The Galaxy wallpaper is the worst of the bunch, no less.

I foresee a huge year for Apple product releases, new iPad aside. In fact, I think they’re going to change up their normal “hold this product till next quarter to milk the fan base and keep the launches consistent” theme and go all out.

Reasons:

1. Tim Cook has something to prove - Despite having the highest CEO rating, and being rated even higher than Jobs by Apple employees, there is still that feeling of “is he just launching things Jobs had already lined up?” If he wants to nip these whispers in the bud, he needs to launch more products than even necessary this year. I think Apple will overkill the launch lineup.
2. Apple’s stock is in momentum mode and they should keep this going - At the time of this post, AAPL is going for $605 a share. Ridiculous right? What’s crazier is that people are looking at this number unsatisfied, as if it were a game - “what if Apple were worth a Trillion dollars! *pinky to mouth*”. In the last 5 trading days, AAPL has gone down $25 a share, but this is fine; investors need to breathe for a sec - they’ll be back after the next product launches.
3. The Apple Ecosystem is almost at full circuit - While iCloud is keeping your Apple devices synced up, AirPlay via Apple TV is keeping you engaged. When Mountain Lion comes out, you’ll find more people buying AirPlay simply for Mirroring. Why not launch a few products that can market how the new OS, Apple TV, and AirPlay products work in harmony?
4. The iPhone and iPad are gateway drugs and with iOS UX being ported back into Apple Mac OS, PC users with iPhones around the world are going to think twice when buying their next computer.

I’m not an Apple fanboy by any means, but I hope all of the above takes place; it’s always a win-win for technologists when the big players up the ante with true innovation.

Best,

~R

I know Instagram and Path are 2 different things, but when a person is bored and has 120s to kill, you have to fight for the right to be launched. In other words, a person will probably launch 3 apps max, fling through the streams, and put their phone back in their pocket.

That could be:

Mail, Facebook, Twitter

Mail, Facebook, Instagram

Facebook, Twitter, Path

etc.

If Instagram starts losing traction, this works in Path’s favor.

Path: launch a sticky, compelling, 2.5/3 app, and I might be a return customer.

Cheers*

~R

You know how you wake up sometimes and you’re immediately thinking about a word, phrase, or song? Well I woke up this morning thinking “NSMutableArray”.

Weird.

Mountain Lion is going to be the OS that pushes Apple TV sales to the next tier, all because of mirroring.