A New Chapter
Our story, lessons from yesterday, hopes for tomorrow.
TL;DR;
We decided to focus our startup on “gamification”.
We will be a product-first company and try to survive first.
For the last year, we focused on building our own decentralized web technology with the “Wander” protocol/SDK project, but decided to postpone our efforts for the profitable era.Our first product will be a gamified productivity app.
Dorkodu’s new website is on the way :) Along with some news about our team, new mission, and our first product: Trekie!
Well.. How we came here?
A vision or a mirage?
When we started this journey, two sentences simplified our goals, as a tech startup founded by two passionate kids.
Your life, one place.
Just like a digital mind.
This was our vision when we started.
Computers as tools for thought.
Making life feel more like a game.
Saying hello to your digital twin.
A new dimension to fulfill your dreams.— Doruk Eray
Our love for craft
We started out as true craftsmen. Even as kids, we loved building things. For ourselves, for our friends... And personally I enjoyed and really appreciated design.
Civilizations are built by designers, philosophers, builders, inventors... And ordinary people.
Some people are the original founders, leaders.
Just because they “change things”.
They think the unthinkable, do the unimaginable.
Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.
― Steve Jobs
Design is everywhere
Design is not doesn’t always have to be for user-facing products. After first few years, started writing our own libraries. Making them for UIs, data-fetching, state management, storage, auth* or even game engines.
Because we had a different style. A brand new idea for same old problems. And on paper/code they proved us right.
And at some point, I started approaching software from a philosophical perspective. Ways we human-beings create, consume and interact with information.
Decentralized Web
I discovered TFT (Tools For Thought) as a whole field/category.
And decentralization seemed the next inevitable stage of the Web, a.k.a. Web3 in crypto community.
Yes, still I believe in DWeb.
Nostr, Bluesky, IPFS, Ethereum (and obviously Bitcoin) are great milestones. Good attempts. They are growing fast. Creating a whole different ecosystem around basics.
But we needed something more web-native. More for product designer/developers like us. A toolbox, an opinionated full-stack framework for DWeb.
Wander
Me and Berk both loved writing our own libraries, low-level code. Hated frameworks. Liked the idea of DIY in any chance.
Our favorite open source library is Sage, the marvelous data exchange framework. It allows you to easily build & consume fully typesafe APIs, just describe your data resources and actions.
masterpiece-d it into perfection. Credits to him! 🎉
I designed it, but actually
We came up with this idea before tRPC. A similar concept of end-to-end type checking & IDE autocompletion.
Almost two years ago I started working on a project called Wander, a decentralized social knowledge protocol; utilizing IPLD and IPFS in a Nostr-like fashion, prioritized P2P, with a web-first SDK in TypeScript.
Identity, data and social circles all are owned by users. Full user agency and ownership on the Web.
First highlights & falling off the stage
I presented it in last November 2023 at IPFS Connect @ Istanbul. But it took nearly 1.5 years, and the community were moving too fast, with well funded teams, better engineering (Oops!) and commercial deals...
I would love to thank Boris Mann from Fission for letting me in conference, having a coffee together @ Bogazici University and changing my perspective with all his insights. A true mentor, an elder brother I can say. Cheers to him! 🍻
Breakdown
We as two teenagers, with no money in our pockets, spent more than 4 years just to build a few unadopted technologies instead of gold-rush apps, games, or even day-trading.
None of my friends actually understood what we’ve been doing for last years. Some local developers I talked with didn’t appreciate it either, or my “family”.
🤓 “Why work for free on open source stuff?”
🙄 “With no degree, what could you know anyway?”
😒 “You aren’t even an engineer. Stop that delusion.”
😜 “What, you are working for freedom on the internet?”
😂 “Haha, just a bunch of kids and their dreams...”
I was upset, depressed, hopeless...
My passion has led us to nowhere.
I knew it was time to start over.
New beginnings
I archived all technical projects. Took some pencils and papers. Started sketching. But this time, a product. An app everyone would use. For common good. For humankind.
Journaled a lot, read a lot, binge-surfed the entire productivity web. All my handwritten notes on tools for thought...
Trekie
And found it. Something worth investing my next 10 years into.
Ever wondered what would it be like to live your life like a game? A dashboard for your life? Well, you are not alone :)
We call it Trekie, have been building it for the last few months. A gamified productivity companion. With social features.
We will share more details soon we feel comfortable with the prototype. Comment below to get access for private beta! :)
Some Other News
What’s that about music?
I’ve been writing songs for months, decided to form a rock band, called it “Terraspark”.1 Nowadays we are producing our debut album, “Sea Waves & Sand Castles”.
Stay tuned...
Good times are ahead of us.
We see it now, and glad to be able to show you all.
See you on the brighter side of the moon fam'
— Doruk
A reference to "Terraspark Boots" item in the popular Terraria game. Our team’s all time favorite. We love it.
Hey, thanks for reading our blog! Wanna check our Telegram channel for updates? https://t.me/dorkodu