We're an open contribution venture studio creating applications that respect your time, attention, and autonomy. Technology should enhance life, not hijack it. Our intent is to use this next sesmic shift in code accleration and digital technology enablement propelled by LLM code agents to take back user's times and repurpose digital/virtual time, so we can reclaim it for better applications in life.
| Philosophy | Mission/Goal | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Design Philosophy | For Human Good | Build and product roadmap dedicated to augmenting natural realities and subverting damage from profit-driven lifestyle applications |
| Anti-Hero Application Patterns | Weaponize "negative" or dark patterns for good; applications should help basic human psychology and respect individual's "true nature" | |
| Simple & Artistic Design | Design influenced by UX/UI best practices while respecting the art of design | |
| Phone As a Server | Phone serves the individual rather than absorbing them; moonshots include wearables (haptics, audio, "dumb" screens) and notifications to increase reality time | |
| Aggresive Omnichannel Design | We want to use text, phone calls, even mail and events to help broach generational gaps, as well as different focus systems and lifestyle choices | |
| Business Philosophy | The New Bundle | Marketplace allowing individuals to pick up and drop apps, countering anti-competitive bundles (Adobe/Microsoft) |
| Build for Blue Oceans | Always seek new ideas serving market needs based on intrinsic value (not investor dollar value) | |
| Alpha to Omega App Cycles | Apps serve their purpose then phase out; embrace natural lifecycle | |
| Community Sourced | Rely on the community and like-minded sponsors who enable us to provide services | |
| Alpha to Omega Growth | Believe in natural life and death of companies rather than endless growth | |
| Technology Philosophy | Adopt Local First Principles | Enable local-first principles for data custody |
| Open to Close(ish) Source | May maintain select open-source elements based on strategic considerations | |
| Dumber Technology | Using omnichannel design, phone as a server and voice functions to help reduce harmful screen time. | |
| Community Philosophy | Transparent Funding | Explore community participation opportunities and compensation models that align with project goals |
| New Hiring Models | May leverage various talent discovery methods including hackathons and open-source contributions | |
| Incentivize Open-Source Concept | Explore incentive models for community participation as deemed beneficial | |
| Governance Philosophy | Intellectual Property | TACo retains discretion over IP ownership, licensing, and attribution models for all projects and contributions |
| Contributor Agreements | Participation terms determined on per-project basis, with appropriate agreements as necessary | |
| Revenue Sharing | Compensation and revenue models structured at company discretion to ensure sustainability | |
| Platform Governance | Marketplace rules, app acceptance, and removal policies determined by TACo leadership | |
| Never Enshitify | Just don't make the product worse to extract more wealth. Not cool. | |
| Data Rights | While supporting local-first principles, TACo maintains necessary rights to operational and aggregate data | |
| Staffing Philosophy | Age of Opinion and SME + Usability | I want to hire staff that are actual subject matter experts w/ design and developers dedicated to making these realities. I want a lawyer, a industrial psychology, event planner, etc. to build. |
| Dunning-Krueger Effect | Many people are going to think AI empowers them to build things. That is great. But you aren't the best person to build a personal CRM. It still doesn't work like that. Information architects, developers, product designers combined will build a better product longer term. Products need to be built to help people become better, not just scratch the surface on their current understanding on things. |
| Phase | Focus Areas | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Now | ADHD | Relationships + Productivity |
| Empowered to Act | Legal | |
| Next | Health and Wellness | |
| Mental Health | Digital Wellbeing | |
| Later | Human Resources | Recruiting Solutions |
| Dating | Relationship platforms | |
| Moonshots | Data Custody | User data ownership |
| Adaptive Data | Morphing data structures | |
| TACo App Launcher | Native launcher application | |
| Internal | LiveOps | Hackathon software |
| Volitions | Chain-prompt agents |
- Full schedule coming soon-- intent is to do bi-weekly to monthly hackathons at universities, cohorts and group-ups with cash prizes.
- Objective is to be nimble on event costs, make it free to join, have sponsors help pay the way and enable users to perform live gamfified hackathons powered by LLM coding tools such as opencode.
- Teaching developers to build ethical, user-respecting applications.
- Similar to Obsidian, we will focus on 1) never enshitifiy 2)community rounds 3)for community, provided by community
- Checking with Vendors to sponsor apps and hackathons to tie to tech stack
🤖 All our projects follow the Thoughtful App Principles