One guy. One idea. Sixteen years.

Around sixteen years ago, one guy sat down and designed this. Not a pitch deck — actual layered Photoshop documents, which still exist today. It had a different name back then. That name is not being revealed yet, because it is still a good name and it is worth securing.

The reason it existed was simple. There was a problem nobody had solved properly: every person now lives across a dozen platforms, and there was no single honest place that held all of it together. Not a feed. Not another social network. A home for the handles.

So the solution got created, because the solution could not be found anywhere else.

Then life happened. Other apps came out and it was discouraging. There were too many projects at once, and — insert a million other reasons, excuses, distractions and redirections of life here, because they were all real and they all cost time.

Fifteen years later, those Photoshop files got dusted off. And the strange part is this: it still looked good. It still stood strong and it still held true. Every other company that ever tried something in this neighbourhood ended up building something completely different. What was sitting in those files was not the same thing, and it answered the questions that still had not been answered.

So everything went into it. In a little more than the last three years, every risk available got taken. Everything got sold. There was a drive across Canada and America, then living nomadically — literally all over — while building this app. It is a wild story. A big, wild, fun journey of character shaping and culture shaping.

Timing, technology and tools finally lined up with the stage of life that actually allowed this to get fully built. That alignment is the whole point. Trust the journey and every other eye-rolling cliché — they happen to be the one common denominator in every mad-genius creator story. It is almost always the same story.

The timing is now. This is how one person builds a company into something that will be valued well past a conservative 2.3 billion.

And the way it grows is the same way it was built — by asking. A list got put together and everybody on it got asked directly. Here is the plan. You help me, this helps you, we all help each other. Cool people who saw the vision traded their promotion and their endorsement for a piece of the pie, and it simply happened.

After that, everyone involved is free to be lazy and eat chocolate bars, or do absolutely whatever they want.