an email from eugene
Hello friends! I’ll share what I’ve been working on for 1 year, and how a startup with fantastic traction collapsed overnight
In July 2022 I spent many hours walking around Berlin, and at a certain point I realized that I for the life of me can’t recall where exactly I have been and where I haven’t: on the one hand it feels like you’ve been everywhere and there’s nothing new to see; on the other, sometimes you find a new unfamiliar back alley literally around the corner
From these long walks — and a childhood spent in the fictional worlds of video games — a brilliant idea came up: take a city map, put the so-called “fog of war” on top (think Heroes 3), read phone’s location 24/7 — and you end up with a very personal map of the city which shows, unambiguously, where I’ve already been and where I haven’t
This idea, in the shape of a brief description and a rough sketch, was instantly validated on Twitter: it turned out that I’m not the only one who dreams of a personal map of the world. It’s quite incredible when other people instantly get your idea and want to download an app that does not yet exist. I very much wanted to make it happen — especially considering that similar existing apps felt rather mediocre, and had download count in tens of thousands regardless
