We had to focus on brass tax and value.
Yes, I meant brass tacks. No, that is not what I wrote in the braindump.
The idea was a smarter way to control all the connected things in a home. I had bought a Raspberry Pi a few months earlier and kept hacking on it with a friend. By that night I was on a train writing shitty Go and Python code to turn TVs on and off from a web app.
The software was not the scary part. Between me and the developers I knew, we could get to a prototype. The harder question was what should exist after the prototype.
A service or consulting business can solve a specific problem in one specific home. It can use good people, existing hardware, and a lot of custom work. That is valuable, but it is different from a repeatable product. I was interested in a platform for coordination and control, something that could work across devices without rebuilding the whole thing for every customer.
I did not know the market fit yet. I did not even know exactly what the consumer version should be. My instinct was to build software upward, learn what was feasible, and then find the value. I wanted Google, not Apple. A platform, not a perfectly controlled box.
There were people I trusted who understood homes, customers, and the practical side of installing this stuff. That could become a strong combination. They could bring real-world experience and possible customers. I could bring software, a developer network, and enough resources to reach a prototype.
But I had a full-time job, and I was highly allergic to stopping the code so we could create an entity around an idea nobody could describe yet.
If we fleshed it out, I was 130 percent in favor of forming something real. Until then, the company was not the work. The work was making the TV turn on and figuring out whether anybody needed what came next.