April 28th, 2011

Posted by: Travis | 2 Comments »

This is kind of a surreal moment for me. Back in 2003 2004, I was a student at the University of Washington and I worked part-time at a coffee shop as a barista. Being a Seattle native, this was a pre-requisite in my mind. The best part about my job, besides the free coffee and food, was the interesting people that I got to meet. One such guy was a fellow named Wil Shipley. At the time I had no idea how important Wil is to the technology world. I just knew him as the slightly neurotic software coder who was building something called Delicious Library out of the cafe I worked at.

I also go to know, although admittedly less so, a kid who was building Delicious Library with Will – his name was Mike Matas. I never really understood how talented Mike was until I saw Delicious Library at work. The interface was beautiful and very intuitive. A lot of other people thought so too and DL won tons of awards in 2005. Later that year, I found out that Mike was leaving for San Francisco. He was going to work with, as it was put to me, “an elite group of designers” for a little company called Apple. He was only 17.

Mike Matas

6 years and several massively popular products later, Mike is demoing his new project at TED. I think PushPopPress is going to revolutionize the way we read books. I also can’t believe that I can actually say “I knew that guy.” Mike is an example of someone who does what they love, does it well and is wildly successful because of it. I think that all entrepreneurs should be this way because, in the end, if you didn’t enjoy yourself, what the hell was the point?