My Twos Story
by Parker · 36 things on NewTwos
- For the past 7 years, I've been building the best app and website for people to remember *things*. The next chapter will allow people to share *things* with other people, but this is the story so far...
- How it all started
- I first started building apps in 2015 while I was an intern at a tech company named Qualcomm in San Diego, CA.
- I was fortunate for the opportunity to work at an amazing tech company, but one conversation with my mentor was particularly memorable.
- We were having lunch at the cafeteria in our building and he suggested I start writing down the things I was doing and learning throughout the summer. He mentioned it would be helpful to reference when putting together my resume and preparing for future job interviews.
- I took his advice and began capturing what I was doing in Apple Notes.
- I was already writing things down in a Google Doc (I journaled a lot during my freshman year of college to cope with depression) and really enjoyed how writing helped me think and raise my awareness.
- The idea
- One evening, I was at a San Diego Padres game with my dad. I sat there staring into the outfield thinking about all of the new things I was learning and writing down.
- Then it hit me.
- Wouldn’t it be cool to share some of the things I was doing and learning at work with friends, family, and anyone else interested?
- Why is Facebook and Twitter only for capturing things you intend on sharing? What if there was a platform where you originally wrote things down privately, but then you could easily share certain things to connect with people?
- People could capture anything, quickly: an experience with your dad at a Padres game, how you felt after your final presentation at the end of your internship or an idea for a birthday present for your mom.
- A single place to quickly and privately capture all the little things (names, ideas, parking spot numbers, dreams, ...) and then choose which things you'd like to share.
- I was new to programming. I had just started learning app development, but I leaned over to my dad and said, “I’m starting this tonight.”
- The development
- For the rest of the summer and throughout my senior year at Vanderbilt, I woke up early and stayed up late watching tutorials, brainstorming on whiteboards, and building the first version of this half-private, half-social platform, Twos.
- I called it Twos for a few reasons. It had two sides (a private side and a public side), it was a short and punchy name, and "Twos" was an inside joke I had with my girlfriend at the time (whenever good things happened, we would throw up a peace sign with our hand and yell, "Twoooos!").
- I begged my girlfriend to let me use our joke for the app name and made the "like" button on the social side a hand peace sign to spread positivity and celebrate shared *things*.
- The week before I graduated in 2016, and one of the proudest moments of my life, I launched the first version of Twos.
- After graduation, I traveled through Europe with my friends and older brother, Spencer, and luckily, I had Twos to remember all of the things we were doing.
- Continued improvement
- The value I felt from using Twos inspired me to continue improving upon the app experience with the goal of sharing it with more people and helping them remember more things.
- After my trip, I accepted a full-time position at Qualcomm but kept working on Twos every morning, night, and weekend.
- I loved building Twos so much that I would get upset if I had to go to dinner or play golf. All I wanted to do was build Twos.
- I built a few other small apps and websites to teach myself new programming languages and eventually rebuilt Twos versions two and three, but this time things were different...
- In versions two and three there was no public side. I decided to prioritize improving the private experience of writing things down with the intention to bring back the public side once it was good enough to help people remember things.
- At the same time, I also met my now co-founder, Joe, who had a similar passion for remembering and sharing things with others. Joe's intuitive feel for what a new user needs mixed with my ability to program made us a well-rounded team.
- Every day, Twos got better. Search improved, swipes were added, calendar integrated, to-dos, reminders, artificial intelligence, tagging, collaboration... all focused on creating the best place to remember things.
- The next part of the story
- To us, it’s crazy that in 2022 people still forget things. This shouldn't be a problem when we walk around everywhere with computers in our pockets.
- Just like my mentor at Qualcomm mentioned, forgetting things is an existential problem. People forget things every day and the simplest way to remember things is to write them down.
- That is why we are building Twos, the first app and website designed to help people remember things.
- In the future, we will reintroduce the public side to allow people to share, connect, and learn things from one another.
- For now, Twos is free, easy to use, and helps you remember things.
- Happy Twosday ✌️