Monthly Archives: June 2023

Whoop Podcast

Whoop is an excellent biometrics bracelet I’ve been wearing for a few months since my friend Jaime Waydo joined as their CTO. After many years of being very in the Garmin 945 camp, I now do an Apple Ultra for all the smart stuff, and Whoop for all the great sleep, HRV, and recovery information that I use to be aware of my energy levels throughout the day, complemented by the Rise sleep and energy tracker app. This has been my ideal combo.

The founder and CEO of Whoop, Will Ahmed, interviewed me for their podcast, which we covered for a more mainstream audience my passion for open source and creating an open ecosystem for a web, how I got started as an entrepreneur, how Automattic hires, growth mindset and mental clarity, working with Joe Hudson as an executive coach, and day-to-day routine (or lack thereof, sometimes).

Apple Journals & Day One

Apple almost never fails to wow, and they had a lot of cool announcements at WWDC yesterday. Apple’s previously favorite (app of the year!) journaling app was Day One, one of Automattic’s products, but they announced their own Journal app. One nice thing about competing with Apple is they only really interoperate with their own devices, and they’re usually not good at social. Day One is launching Shared Journals soon, a social feature so you can have fully end-to-end encrypted shared private journals with friends and family. It’s been the thing I’ve been most excited about since we bought the app. (Paul can attest how much I ask him about it!)

That complements another advantage Day One has, which is being cross-platform. If you have a family member on Android, you don’t want to ostracize them from your Shared Journal. Apple doesn’t care, their priority is getting everyone on the Apple ecosystem. You care, and Day One/Automattic does too, that’s why it works great on all Apple devices, Android devices, and the web itself.