It's late on a Tuesday, and I'm staring at my laptop screen, debugging an API integration that just won't cooperate. No IT help desk to call. No teammate to bounce ideas off. Just me, my code editor, and a few coding sites open. Welcome to the founder life—a world away from my cushy role at Apple, where there was a specialist for every imaginable task. This was my life for the majority of 2024.

A year ago, I took the leap from big tech to start Attrove. People often ask if I miss the prestige of Apple, those notorious buses with WiFi¹ , or the certainty of knowing exactly what my day would bring. 

The truth? Sometimes. 

But what I've gained in return—the thrill of building something from scratch (or zero to one in tech parlance² ), the deep satisfaction of solving real problems, and yes, even the vast uncertainty—has been worth every exhilarating moment.

The Genesis: From Frustration to Innovation

My last role at Apple involved managing teams across three time zones—California, China, and India. My typical day started with parsing through a massive deluge of email, rolled into back-to-back meetings, and often ended with late-night factory syncs with the China team. Between Slack messages, emails, calendar invites, and various project management tools, critical information was scattered across a dozen platforms. I kept thinking: this is madness, there has to be a better way.

By November 2022, while the world was buzzing about ChatGPT³ , I was experiencing my own life-changing event: the birth of my son. Nothing puts productivity in perspective quite like having a newborn. Suddenly, every minute of the day became harder to manage. I had to find a better harmony with my work & life—and I had a hunch that these nascent language models would be the spark to start my founder journey.

Finding the Signal in the Noise

I decided to make the leap at the end of 2023 and start working on something new.

By early 2024 the idea for Attrove had formed and I started reaching out to other product and engineering leaders about their communication challenges. 

This type of frustration proliferates the workplace today. I knew I was on to something.

I conducted around a hundred interviews, each reinforcing what I already suspected: the tools that enable remote work were also creating new friction points. Some interesting findings:

• Workers at Fortune 500 companies typically switch between apps 1,200 per day wasting an average of 4 hours per week per employee⁴

• All but a few people I spoke with felt they had too many meetings (both virtual and in-person)

• Most fascinating: nearly everyone had created their own "system" to manage the chaos, usually involving multiple browser windows and countless notifications

Building the Solution

The initial prototype was simple: I fed sample work communications into various LLM models to see what insights they could extract. It was a manual test of what LLMs could actually do, and the results were promising enough to start building Attrove's core platform.

Turning that prototype into a production-ready system was another challenge entirely. We needed to build a secure platform that could handle sensitive corporate communications while processing thousands of messages in real-time. After evaluating several architectures, we settled on a containerized microservices approach using Docker, TypeScript & Node.js—allowing us to scale different components independently as user demand grew. We’re continuing to learn how to best handle large volumes of communication data, but these cloud native tools (such as Supabase) are incredible and definitely up to the task.

The early product focus is on three key problems:

1. The Morning Chaos: Remember all those early morning emails? Attrove now provides an AI-powered brief of everything you missed overnight, plus what's coming up today. One early user called it their daily rundown and that term has stuck with me.

2. The Context Problem: Nothing's worse than joining a meeting and realizing you need to spend half the meeting getting everyone on the same page. We built smart meeting previews that automatically gather relevant communications from across all platforms and present them in a nice summary before your meeting.

3. The Cracks: I witnessed countless times when information was missed or simply lost—and decisions were made on incomplete information, ultimately costing time and money. Attrove automates the parsing of messages and trend detection, so critical insights are caught and highlighted.

Raising Early Funding: The Friends & Family Round

Raising money is humbling. Your idea—your baby—gets scrutinized from every angle. I'd pitched plenty of ideas at Wharton and Apple, but this was different. This wasn't about a grade or securing leadership approval; it was about convincing people to bet their hard-earned money on your vision.

The pitch deck went through innumerable iterations. Each version got more focused, more realistic, and better. The market size slides were admittedly speculative (aren't they always at this stage?), but the problem resonated with everyone. Every potential investor had their own horror story about being stuck in meetings and drowning in email.

After running through a handful of these pitches, I finally had enough pre-seed money to execute the next stage of Attrove: hiring a couple founding engineers.

Building the Team

It's a fair question, and one I've heard many times while recruiting.

My answer? You'll help shape not just the product, but the entire company culture from day one. It’s an awesome opportunity and a chance to grow tremendously.

Finding the right people is like solving a complex equation with multiple variables. Technical skills matter, but equally important is finding individuals who are energized by uncertainty and comfortable with wearing multiple hats. I'm incredibly proud of those who have spent time at Attrove—and I keep looking for that next hire who will continue to push us forward.

Launching a Beta: Embracing Imperfection

They say if you're not embarrassed by your first release, you launched too late. Well, we're right on track because parts of our platform still make me cringe. But you know what? Our early users are finding value despite the rough edges. Their feedback, bug reports, and feature requests are shaping Attrove into something better than I could have envisioned alone.

We’re starting to pick up product velocity and I look forward to continuing to refine our offering.

Looking Ahead to 2025

As we close out 2024, the roadmap ahead is both exciting and daunting. We're expanding our closed beta, preparing for a seed round, and most importantly, continuing to learn from our users. The problem we're solving isn't just about technology—it's about giving people back their time and mental space to focus on what truly matters.

Starting Attrove has been the hardest professional challenge I've ever undertaken. It's also been the most rewarding. Every small win—a successful demo, a bug fixed, a happy user—feels like a victory not just for the company, but for everyone who has believed in this vision.

Want to join us on this journey? Whether as a beta user, team member, or just someone interested in the problem we're solving, I'd love to hear from you. Here's to continuing the adventure in 2025!

1: https://www.macrumors.com/2014/03/31/apple-expanding-employee-transportation-program/

2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_to_One

3:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ChatGPT

4: https://hbr.org/2022/08/how-much-time-and-energy-do-we-waste-toggling-between-applications