I’m happy to announce that over the next five months, we’ll be taking our 1.2 year old New York company and product, ToutApp, to the next level here in California as part of Dave McClure’s 500Startups Accelerator program.
ToutApp is a New York Company
I had always thought ToutApp would be a New York company, in fact we still are a proud New York company. But a lot of my plans changed after I met Dave McClure at SXSW.
Shortly after meeting him, he decided to invest, and he extended an invitation to come to 500Startups for the summer so that we can work together to make “ToutApp go BOOM.”
Who can resist an offer like that?
“All Systems GO.”
Moving to California
And so, about a month ago, I packed up my bags, said goodbye to my wife, my family and my close friends and headed out West (again).
It was a little rocky at first, but after 2 hotel beds, 1 miserably failed CraigsList sublet experience, 1 AirBnB bed, and 1 couch, and about 1,000 miles on my rented Toyota Yaris, I finally set up an apartment.
I moved into the 500 office, closed out my Advisory Round, and started to build out my team.
Fortunately, I was even able to convince Derek (our new lead engineer) to move out here as well. And once we got our space set up, we then convinced our iPhone developer, Andrew, to “visit” for a week or so.
He ended up buying a one-way-ticket.
Thoughts on 500Startups so far
Just from the first two weeks of the Accelerator, I can already see how:
a) these five months are totally going to fly by.
b) what an amazing impact this accelerator program is going to have not only on my personal growth but ToutApp’s business and product.
c) how Dave seems to scour all ends of this planet to source some of the most amazing entrepreneurs I’ve ever met in my life.
Some snapshots from the Journey so far
“From UX Bootcamp, my thoughts on how I conceptualize the E-Mail ecosystem”
“Someone snuck this picture of me as I was in deep thought thinking about how to evolve email”
“We eat our own Dog Food”
“Notes from a UX Review”
We’re excited. We’re scared.
We’re now heads down building product so we can help people communicate better using email.
