OPENMAT ongoing

Our screens are built for scrolling and staring, not doing, not showing up. Think of people who's superpower is presence, like teachers, like trainers, like priests, people with gravity. The purpose of OPENMAT is to start at the end result, showing up to these people, and work backwards to the screen in as few steps as possible. In doing so, the goal is to move from the screen to showing up, at scale.

I’ve lifted for about 12 years now, I believe in showing up to the gym as much as church, and so I got my NASM certification and became a trainer at a local rec center. The goal was to BE that person of presence, and build for me first.

MACKLEY paused

Yoga "kriyas" are important habits for clearing the mind and body before prayer and meditation. Rinsing your nose with saline water, "jala neti", is the very first kriya--and that's not a coincidence.

You enter this world on a breath, and you leave when breathing stops. You can go months without food, days without water, but only minutes without air. 95% of people focus on diets, supplements, brushing, and flossing, but less than 2% clean their nasal passage.

After living at the Bihar School of Yoga for a month, I saw devoted yogis clean their nose each morning with a copper neti pot. When I returned to the U.S., I tried to find a good neti pot, but they're all plastic or ceramic, materials that degrade or break. So I sourced the best possible copper neti pot from friends I had met in India, and built a website to describe why it's the most underrated hygienic habit.

Muchachos ongoing

Wherever I've lived, this tile of two "muchachos" has hung in my room. It reminds me of my dad and me. He loves a good sandwich and enjoys thinking about business, but I don't think he's ever really had his own. So for Christmas, I bought a 501(c)(3) incorporation. A few weeks later, for his birthday, I built this simple website.

The idea: if you buy a $10 sandwich, you get one, and another is given to charity (something we already do at church). The problem is that most donated sandwiches are bad, cheap bread, no meat, low-quality cheese. So we make artisan sandwiches and sell one to afford the other. And of course, you get a chocolate chip cookie too.

Coffee Truck May 2024

One night, I was scrolling on Craigslist and found a coffee truck looking for a co-owner to take over operations. I emailed: “you’ve never had someone who wants you to succeed so badly.” I got the job.

...It was a nightmare... My first two weeks were spent driving this massive truck on the highway to events--which is an insane experience. Like one time, a coffee machine flew off the counter because it wasn’t latched while I was on the highway. Everything shattered. Coffee everywhere.

Eventually, I found the perfect parking spot in one of the busiest lots in Austin. I spent a week gutting and cleaning the truck, it was terribly filthy, and simplified everything so we focused just on coffee with minimal inputs.

Then I invented a cool community offering: employees in our lot got 30% off; visitors got 20% off. The goal was to drive real, local transactions. I loved talking to people and earning regulars. And it worked... albeit for a few days... until I got fired. Right after the truck became profitable again.

Free Pancakes February 2024

I invented the "pass-it-on" coupon and then built it for local Austin, TX diner Kerbey Lane Cafe: you get free pancakes or 20% off when you text the deal to a friend.

The goal was to use phones to drive real, in-person traffic. Among people aged 65+ about 5 miles south of Austin, over 700 people shared the deal--and 7% of recipients actually came in. Pretty cool.

We'd find a booth, setup our laptops, and scout whether people were scanning these little QR stickers on tables. Pretty fun experience and solid pancakes.

There were two main problems: first, the waiter didn't give AF about our deals because she didn't get paid any more or less... I learned that aligned incentives, at all levels, matters. Second, if a goal is scale, then customers needed to sign up in 2-3 minutes, but this diner took 2-3 months... brick-and-mortar is a game of attrition for startups.

Austin is a food truck city. And food trucks are different; the person behind the counter is usually the chef, marketer, and owner. He makes decisions instantly.

Popsicle Stand November 2023

I wanted to apply Snapchat-level viral loops to real-world transactions, and came up with the "pass-it-on" coupon. It's super simple: you get that deal if you share (text) it with a friend first.

To test whether people share deals, I bought a few hundred otter pops (popsicles me and neighborhood friends survived on at the pool during the summers) and set up a table outside of Barton Springs pool. You got a free otter pop if you text that deal to a friend.

30 people shared the deal in the first hour. Most people text their girlfriend, or the person next to them... so the concept works. The next question: will it work in a real business? Like a restaurant?

Wyd April 2023

Wyd stands for "What're You Doing." It was a micro-Twitter application where you have one constantly updating status, so you can see what your friends are doing and jump into ephemeral conversations.

It was interesting, but it didn't get anyone to actually go out and do anything. It just kept people texting more. Not showing up in real life. So I wasn't excited and kept pushing forward.

OpenMat 1.0 December 2022

The purpose of OpenMat 1.0 was to bridge the gap between real places and online identity. The first version was a social map, largely inspired by SnapMaps. Every "point of interest" (POI), like the local gym on Google, now had a public group chat. Fun idea, but it failed because there's no point in texting into a void. You need a critical mass of people for it to matter.

I raised a few hundred thousand dollars in a pre-seed for this company. It was my first venture-backed startup... Super grateful to Tim, Jeremy and Paul, for putting their belief in me. OpenMat, and most of its successors failed in one way or another... but it's like learning to crawl, then walk, then run... eventually I will build something that measurably changes the world for the better. And I owe it to OpenMat 1.0 and the people I worked with for sparking this initial flame.