Memos
February 2026
I started building Memos on February 20th, 2026. I was using six apps to keep up with my friends (Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, WhatsApp, iMessage) and none of them were built for the actual conversations I was having with the people I cared about.
Those conversations were always about the same four things:
- What we were reading
- What we were listening to
- What we were watching
- What we were thinking
I wrote a PRD before opening Figma, then built a design system before designing a single screen. Navy and lavender as the base colours, Plus Jakarta Sans for type, semantic colours for each content type — green for saved, red for errors, purple for thoughts.
The product has to address a feeling before any screen exist. Having a strong system helps address that feeling at scale.
I shipped the landing page before building the product, using Tally for the waitlist. The landing page already collected email, so I passed it as a URL parameter to prefill Tally on arrival and skip the duplicate input.
Memos is still live and collecting signups.
Onboarding has four steps:
- Create your account: Email, password, display name.
- Make it yours: Pick an avatar colour, write a one-line bio.
- Your first memo: The most deliberate decision in the flow; I made posting a memo a required step before sending invites. For the user, it means trying out the product before they're fully onboarded.
- Invite your circle. Memos without friends is a journal. This is where the product becomes itself.
The Now Page is a three-column feed of what your circle is reading, watching, listening to, and thinking about. Every post is a card, and each card has to hold four content types without breaking visual coherence. That component took the most thought.
However, memos didn't ship. I realized along the way that building a social media app takes a long time. The landing page is live though, and has collected signups.
What I'd do differently: Ship smaller. The system-first approach made memos feel finished before it was usable. If I did it again I'd build the ugliest possible version of the Now Page first, give it to five friends, and let the design system catch up to the use. The foundation work was good design practice though.