In late 2019, I walked away from what many would call a dream job.
I had spent years as an infrastructure and security engineer at Slack, helping scale systems from a few hundred thousand users to millions around the world. It was intense, exhilarating, and demanding. We built fast. We shipped hard. We solved complex problems at scale. I was proud of the work—but I was also burned out.
Like many people in tech, I had spent so much time in the abstract—in code, in tickets, in virtual meetings—that I lost touch with the physical world. I needed a reset.
So I picked up a hammer.
From Terminals to Trim Work
My wife and I bought a fixer-upper. Then another. And another. Over the next couple years, we worked side by side, flipping houses and learning by doing. Plumbing, electrical, roofing, permits—everything that used to be someone else’s problem suddenly became mine.
It wasn’t glamorous. But it was grounding.
I’d go from debugging AWS issues to debugging an ancient circuit panel. From reading YAML to reading a sewer map. And slowly, I began to notice something:
Every home tells a story. But most of that story disappears when someone moves out.
Manuals get lost. Repairs go undocumented. Paint colors vanish. Important details—like where the septic tank cleanout is, or how the radiant floor system works—get buried in someone’s memory or thrown in a junk drawer.
As a builder, that drove me nuts. As an engineer, I knew we could do better.
Why I Started Building Again
I didn’t set out to start another company. I really didn’t. But the more homes we worked on, the more I realized how much knowledge was slipping through the cracks—and how painful that made homeownership for the next person.
So I started sketching out an idea: a digital home memory. Something smarter than a spreadsheet. Something better than a shoebox full of receipts. Something that could grow with the house and live beyond the homeowner.
That idea became Dib.
Dib is a home inventory and AI assistant that remembers the things you forget. It learns your home over time—your systems, your paint colors, your shutoffs, your upgrades—and makes all of it searchable and useful when you need it.
Not flashy. Not disruptive. Just really useful. Especially when you're overwhelmed, tired, or just trying to be a good steward of your space.
From Burnout to Purpose
Looking back, I’m grateful for the burnout. It forced me to step away from the screen and start listening to my hands again. To build in the real world. To rediscover what it feels like to fix something that matters—not just for millions of users, but for the one family living in that one home.
Dib isn’t just a product I’m building. It’s a reflection of everything I’ve learned about care, continuity, and craftsmanship—from scaling systems at Slack, to fixing frozen pipes in a crawlspace, to sanding wood alongside my dad and Papa.
So yeah, I burned out.
But now I’m building again.
And this time, I’m building something that remembers.
