Good, cheap drinks and wild ideas equal a good recipe for a new project. That’s how the idea for Yipper started.

Matt and I worked at the same company, Vecna, before we left and eventually founded Mostly Epic to build apps. There was a Bertucci’s near Vecna that happened to be one of the only decent restaurants in Alewife. This Bertucci’s functioned as the meeting place for almost every work-related activity: interviews, on-boarding talks, afternoon touchbases, post-work drinks, and so on. In July, Matt and I sat at one of high tables near the bar and ordered their “happy hour” ciders. It’s illegal to have happy hours in Boston but the owner had found a loop hole: only sell this cider during the happy hour. Because the cider’s cheap price is always the same, it’s never actually sold at a discounted price, just only sold between 5-7pm. Pretty cheeky if you ask me.

First thoughts of Yipper

While we sipped our abnormally cheap drinks, we spoke about what we would build if we could do whatever we wanted. Matt is a self-taught, front-end web developer – one of the best in the business when it comes to accessibility (think deaf and blind users). I am a software engineer from MIT but had recently and rather unexpectedly turned into a Director of Software. What could the two of us build if we put our heads together?

I find this question to be the best part of building something. It lets you imagine bunches of different worlds, each one where you’ve made something amazing. For a brief moment as my thoughts shape an idea, I get to see the end product without the work and luck needed to get there. Why not build a better facebook? What would that look like? Or even better, an app that solves government waste or eases xenophobia! In these thoughts, there is always victory and confidence to get there. No barriers have been put in our path yet and I love looking down the road to the finish line.

While visions of grandeur is fun, Matt and I were looking for something a bit more manageable for two young kids looking to make their first product. Our minds jumped from one concept to the next. One idea piqued our interests as it spoke to both of us.

Matt and I are unequivocally socially awkward.  There are those that are worse, for sure, but there is no denying we lack all of the social graces. If Buzzfeed ever wrote an article about “10 Awkard Things Your Friend Does” (it probably did, I didn’t check), Matt and I could probably check enough off the list between the two of us. You just have to ask my father in law. If we could build something that helps grease the social gears, we’d have at least 2 users excited to use it.

We were buzzing around an idea to lower the “social captial” of texting people. I wanted a way to ask my friends if they wanted to play FIFA 15 on the XBox One each night that I played.  But I played most nights and I didn’t want to piss off my friends with a barage of texts that required his/her response. What if instead, I could send them a push notification to the their phone telling them I was playing. They wouldn’t have to respond, they could just go online if they felt like it. And if not, it was as easy as swiping away a notification. We started getting excited about this one-way push notification sender.

We finished our drinks with a toast to the new idea. I started thinking of names for this app while I headed home to my apartment in Watertown. While I was walking to my door from the bus stop, I thought about the idea. We weren’t sending a text, it was something smaller and something that didn’t need a reply. It was like a bark or a tweet or a cute little Yip. That night kicked off the many iterations of Yipper that would keep us very busy over the next 6 months.