Note-taking tools for devs, with Drew White from Stashpad

Mike talks with Drew White from Stashpad about personal notetaking apps for developers, and the potential of future API hooks for Stashpad.

Show Notes

Stashpad - https://stashpad.com/
Stashpad Discord - https://discord.gg/ScxPxcN9fK

Drew White - @drucial

Creators & Guests

Host

Mike Bifulco

Cofounder and host of APIs You Won't Hate. Blogs at https://mikebifulco.com Into 🚴‍♀️, espresso ☕, looking after 🌍. ex @Stripe @Google @Microsoft

What is APIs You Won't Hate?

A no-nonsense (well, some-nonsense) podcast about API design & development, new features in the world of HTTP, service-orientated architecture, microservices, and probably bikes.

Mike Bifulco: Hello, hello and
welcome to APIs you Won't Hate.

My name is Mike Fulco.

Your effervescent and ever
present host of the show.

Today I am flying solo and having a
chat with actually a friend of mine.

Locally here in my hometown of Charlotte
who I've known for a while now.

And we're, we're gonna talk a bit
about what he is working on, a bit

about how he got there and you know,
some of the backstory of that stuff.

So I'm very excited to talk to today.

Drew White.

Drew, How's it going, man?

Drew White: Hey Mike.

How are you?

Doing good today.

Mike Bifulco: I'm good.

I'm good.

We have a lot of things to talk about.

I'm really interested to hear your
whole story and talk a little bit

about stash pad where you, you
have been laying down your lines

of code of late among other things.

Yeah, and I think we, we'll kind
of get into all those things.

In particular, like anything to do with
building en engineering teams and all

that is always interesting around here.

Drew, tell me about yourself.

How did we meet?

Let's start there

Drew White: this is actually, I feel like
it was kismet if I can use that word.

Yeah.

So I'm a cyclist as you guys
probably know, Mike is as well.

And I was riding with a buddy on a
local Greenway, and Mike was riding one

of the most esoteric bikes that I feel
like only a handful of local cyclists

probably even know what they are.

But I saw it was like, Hey.

Is that a such and such?

And he was like, Yeah, how did you, like,
it was just like a, a sort of thing.

And so we kind of met on the,
the Greenway had a small little

conversation and then later I had a.

Set of wheels for sale.

I, I believe, And you
responded to the post.

I don't think I realized it was
you until you came to pick up the

wheels and bought them and Yeah.

So like that whole thing and then, yeah,
just started riding like morning greenway

grabbing coffee, that sort of thing.

And that was a couple years ago now,

Mike Bifulco: it was during the
dark days of the pandemic for sure.

You know, when, when we were
not doing much indoor stuff,

definitely a bit of kismet there.

And I, I think if I remember like
the space between bumping into each

other for the first time and then me
contacting you on Facebook marketplace

to buy wheels when I needed them
was like days to a week at most.

Drew White: I think it was two days.

I think it was two days.

Mike Bifulco: a very strange back to
back set of coincidences that I'm,

you know, frankly pretty grateful for.

Drew White: And I am too

Mike Bifulco: Yeah, of course.

We've talked about, you know, tons of
writing stuff ever since, of course.

And coffee seems to come up fairly
often and you, you have similar tastes

in design and all that other stuff too.

So it's been super cool to
kind of get to know you here.

And what's been really cool to see
over the past few years is like

you've done a complete full on career.

Like I, I, a pivot is not even fair.

Like you've done an absolute
like SUEx to your working world.

Tell me a little bit about
your working history.

Like what, what have you
done and what are you doing?

Drew White: Yeah, so I've kind
of taken a non-traditional

path into the working world.

I kind of started in finance for
the first two years out of school.

I did not go to college.

Just really wasn't my, I attempted,
but really wasn't my thing.

So jumped into finance for a
couple of years and then spent the.

I don't know, decade or so in aerospace.

Started kind of at the bottom of
sort of midsize company and worked

my way up to marketing director.

And so from there, pivoted out of
that into starting my own marketing

agency which I did smack Deb in
the middle of the pandemic right

around the time that I met you.

And what's interesting is I had been,
You know, fascinated with the developer

world for a couple years at that point.

But really hadn't made it
like a high priority on my,

I tend to accumulate hobbies.

So it kind of fell to
the bottom of the stack.

And then I met you and we were kind
of talking about some of this stuff on

the bike rides and, and such and such.

And I had started building a
lot of websites and things for.

and yeah, just with one of
your, your previous employers.

Shown me the, the gymnasium actually
which was like sort of like tutorial

land, educational portal for largely
like web dev stuff I feel like.

But anyways, took every single
course available on there

and got a lot out of it.

And just like that love of
wanting to build stuff just

ignited from that point forward.

So fast forward.

Let's say a year of really
focusing on development education,

particularly with JavaScript.

I was kind of burn out managing
this, this marketing business.

Found a actual subcontractor that
was interested in acquiring it and.

Bailed and decided that I wanted to
take a stab at, you know, working

for a startup in the tech world.

And so kind of applied to a couple of
places and put my resume out there a

little bit, However minimal it might
have been at that point in time.

And fielded quite a few inquiries and
really landed on I had one conversation.

Kara Bornstein is Stash pad ceo.

And really believed in her vision
and her as a leader of that company.

So it was pretty sold and then in the
second interview, got to meet with the

cto the Meron and was even more sold.

So I had kind of decided at
that point that this is really

where I wanted to be and.

So took a role there as a
developer experience designer,

, Mike Bifulco: man, you've
done so many things in such

a short amount of time, like.

Literally from, from finance to being a
marketing director, to running an agency

to figuring out how to find your way
into the dev world is really fascinating.

you know, Along the way, like you,
you also had some interesting projects

that you put out into the world,
which, though your resume may have

been short at the time you had some
really cool stuff like your skew

amorphism project . That, that was cool.

Do you wanna talk a little bit about.

Drew White: Yeah, sure.

So I was just kind of in all
of my free time, I was building

a lot of UI stuff just.

For learning purposes of my own, but
also just cuz there were things that I

wanted that I, I couldn't find or I didn't
think existed or something like that.

So I was using a lot of like, skew,
morphism, glass, amorphism and

amorphism in some of my designs.

Primarily because I have a background
in 3D design and so it was like

sort of appealing to me to be
able to create some of that stuff.

Sort of like the in, in the web,
which I thought was awesome.

And so yeah, I created this tool.

I got tired of like finagling, like,
okay, 0.3 pixels, 0.4 pixels, like, like

all of this stuff, like adjusting 'em to
get like the shadows and the highlights

and all of that stuff just right.

And so I created a little tool that's
basically a, a CSS generator with

these really nice little sliders
that, you know, you can quickly dial.

The amount of s amorphism amorphism that
you want with the right direction of

light down to like, I think it's 1000th
of a pixel or something like that.

It's pretty crazy.

But yeah, built that and it's actually
gotten quite a bit of use from my, not

only myself, but like other designers
and developers have used it as well.

And yeah, that was like the first
real tool that I built and put out.

Picked up any traction but it
was super fun to build for sure.

Mike Bifulco: Yeah.

I appreciate most about you,
how understated you are.

It, this is an insanely cool thing and
like to me, the, the perfect example

of showing , that you're an interesting
person who's taking a hands on approach to

learning and actually building things out.

I will drop the URL for this
tool in, in the browser or sorry,

in the, in the show notes here.

And what's interesting for the audience
of APIs you won't hate is like a

lot of the folks we work with here.

Really into building the data layer, the
back end side of things, the connective

tissue from the front end to the back end.

But you can imagine in many ways that
you could show off your chops as an

API developer by building out a simple
tool that just shows one facet of

here's how I would, you know, build out
these, these knobs and levers to adjust

the experience of building an api.

Better.

New Amorphism is a very touchable like
you know, tasty kind of thing to be able

to go out and use and like as someone
who's trying to break into the industry

or as someone who was trying to break
into the industry at the time, it's

the perfect kind of prism put in front
of yourself to say like, yeah, cool.

I haven't worked in this yet,
but I do this kind of work and

I do a really good job of it.

And it's gotten some great
attention too, which is really cool.

The, the thing I still need to
yell at you about is you need to

put your name on that webpage.

In big, bold letters somewhere,
minimalism be damned.

People should know where it came from.

You know what I mean?

Drew White: That is sort of like a
thing that we've talked about a bit.

I'm a minimalist through and through like
at every phase and yeah, it's, I get it.

The branding.

I need to be better about that for sure.

And maybe someday I'll put it on there.

Mike Bifulco: Fair enough.

Yeah, I'll go chase down your code
and open a poll request for you.

Yeah.

Cool.

So why don't we talk a little
bit about what you're doing now.

So what is stpa?

Drew White: So Stash Padd is
a notes taking application.

Kind of aims to flip that concept
of notes taking on its head.

The whole point of what we're doing
is reducing the burden of capture.

I mean from my perspective, notes
is not a particularly enjoyable

experience for most people.

However, it is a particularly important.

Part of daily dev life or daily,
you know, really work life.

Being able to get thoughts out of
our head, take notes on conversations

that we've had, meetings standups,
code reviews, all that kind of stuff

very easily, very quickly, and be
able to put it somewhere and not

really have to worry about where
you're putting it necessarily and kind

of give you that feeling and vibe.

Similar to like if you were
dm, DMing yourself in Slack.

Where it's the, it's the lowest
burden of entry for capture.

And the, the, in my personal experience,
I might be biased, but my personal

experience, it's the, it's the least
amount of friction for getting something

out of my head and into somewhere that
I can recall it later when I need to.

So yeah, we've been working on
the app for, oh, probably two

years now, I guess is when.

Things kind of started, but we just
launched in August on product hunt.

And reception has been phenomenal.

It's been so, so good.

So yeah.

That's what Stash pad is.

It's at the helm we have Kara Bernstein
and Theo Meron as the two founders.

And then it's a pretty small team.

We're located in Raleigh
or Durham, North Carolina.

I keep saying Raleigh

every

Mike Bifulco: Middle of both.

Drew White: Yeah.

Yeah.

Mike Bifulco: I mean, most people
put 'em right next to each other

anyway.

Drew White: At the American
Underground there which has been great.

So, Yeah.

Mike Bifulco: Yeah.

Cool.

Yeah.

American Underground is kind of
like the home of startups in,

in that part of North Carolina.

A super cool community created there.

So note taking is a really
interesting thing to me.

I, I have kind of a, a interesting history
with it and actually I remember, I wish

I could tell you when it was, but I
remember a specific conversation I had

with one of my great friends actually.

My former employer, Andrew Miller, who
is the program director over at Gymnasium

and his longtime friend of mine, one
of the, the smartest people I know.

At one point I remember having a
conversation with him where he asked

me about how I take notes for work.

Like how do I keep
track of what I'm doing?

And literally at the time, my
response was, why would I take notes?

Like, I just remember it, you know?

And like the, the brash, bold
statement that I made that

was just like I don't know.

My brain's working at a
thousand percent all the time.

Why do I need to write anything down?

I remember that moment and I remember
like literally a month later being like,

Oh man, I need to write everything down.

Like I'm starting to forget things.

They're all falling outta
the back of my head.

And that, that was the moment where I
really started to focus on like, trying

to organize myself, trying to organize
my thoughts and have frankly, filtered

through a lot of tools in the meantime.

And I think.

The note taking thing and
writing down notes and taking

notes is a virtuous thing.

It's very good.

You want to do it because it, it's
less burden for your, your mind, but

also it helps other people, right?

So like, Drew, if you and I have
a conversation, I'm teaching you

something one on one, that's awesome.

You might learn something from me.

But if I also write it down and one
other person reads it, I've doubled

the efficacy of that conversation.

And that's why note taking is good.

It's also helpful.

If I forget it in the future,
I can come back to it.

What, what I also really
like about it too is that.

Note taking is different for
everyone and you kind of have

to find what works for you.

And I feel like people may feel
like the market is kind of floated,

flooded with note taking tools.

But I think that's because people's style
of thought and their style of organization

is very, very different from one another
and like, Some people are good with

just a notepad, you know, txt file and,
and the chaos that that may bring on.

Some people might like the iOS, you
know, note app for their own thing.

But truly finding something that
is like broadly applicable and

easy to use and easy to understand
is a challenging problem space.

Drew White: Yeah, and I think
actually your experience that you

just described is fairly common.

You know, I had the same.

Greater than do attitude towards
notes in the early days, like

I have a pretty solid memory.

I can remember a lot of things.

But what I think a lot of people who do
take notes now understand, and people who

don't take notes will ultimately figure
out is that the more you keep in your

head, Yeah, you may be able to keep it in
there, but you got limited space up there.

So the more you take in, eventually some
of that stuff's gonna start falling off.

And then there's like the stress of,
you know, some of that data may be

important and then you may not have it.

So I've definitely adapted a practice
and you're absolutely right, there's

a lot of options out there and.

Varying degrees of Complexity,
which is the interesting part to me.

But I think what is so interesting is
just the fact that there are so many,

like different note taking applications
speaks to a larger problem, right?

No one has kind of sorted this stuff out.

Usually, particularly in the
dev the development world,

engineering world dev tools tend
to be winner take all, I mean, vs.

Code by far and away owns the market
and in ide, maybe with JetBrains or

something coming in right behind them.

You've got.

Basically issue tracking tools
and all these other things.

There's usually like a winner take all
sort of situation and in so sort of

personal notes that sort of space that
really isn't something that is landed on.

People are kind of all over the
board from, you know, untitled text

files, just flooding their desktop
to any combination of different

apps, big ones, no notion Evernote
obsidian, all of those things and.

Where we like to think that we can fit
in and, and, and why we're building

this thing in the first place is
to kind of have this defacto, we'll

do whatever you want it to do.

Lightweight and very speedy.

I've used some of the other big
name apps out there particularly.

Like Apple notes and things like that.

And there always seems to be a little
bit of friction between, I just got

told some information that I need to
remember in four hours from now, or two

days from now, or two months from now.

Where do I put that?

How do I organize that in my.

Hierarchy or whatever and how
am I gonna find that later?

And that has always been my challenge.

I've bounced around from, from
app to app long before I even

knew that stash pad was a thing.

And so that's the problem
we aim to resolve.

And the reality is if we can bring
a little bit of joy to something

that is often like a mundane sort of
experience yeah, I mean, all the better.

That's.

The goal

Mike Bifulco: Sure.

Yeah.

It's a, it's a hard thing to describe
the way, the value of having a

good note taking system feels.

But like, when you come out on the
other side of it and you start writing

things down, the task of recall
suddenly doesn't become, I need to

remember every detail about this thing.

All you need to remember is that
you wrote it down and you can find

it.

And that's something that, the
scale that comes with that is pretty

tremendous and also really helpful.

Like in three years when I wanna
look up what you and I talked about

today I certainly won't remember.

Right in my brain, but I will remember
that we had this talk and I can jump

back into my notes and chase it down.

Drew White: Yep.

Mike Bifulco: It's, it's super cool
and I feel like there's a lot of

psychology that goes into it, like both
the people's hesitance to take on note

taking, but then like the personal style,
the workflow, the things that trigger

peoples like, I need to take a note
about this, or I need to keep my list

of tasks in this versus you know, am I
summarizing an article or, or writing

down a note about, I dunno, some hack I
wrote in my code, Whatever the case may.

Yeah, I, I like all of that stuff.

It's really interesting to think about
and like you must be building a very kind

of generic tool set to do that, right.

Drew White: Yeah.

I mean, like our whole concept
is, is giving Users, people a

default place to write to that
they don't have to worry about.

Like, it's, it's essentially
a log, you know, it's.

Date timestamped log.

That includes everything that you've got.

So if you even remember roughly what
happened during the day, you should

be able to find the note that, that
you took down which is pretty awesome.

And so sort of the next big thing for
us is further removing we'll call 'em

barriers to capture cuz we believe
that that's the most important thing.

And so as we continue to
expand, Develop the product.

One of our, our major items on our
roadmap is like integrations and our api.

So the whole idea of being able to.

Send content from somewhere into
stash pad or even have that content

automatically be imported into Stash
Padd as a note in the right place when

you need it is really exciting for me.

I don't know what it was like, you know,
at any of your, your previous employers.

But like one of the biggest things moving
to the tech world that kind of knocked

me off my socks is the tech stack.

I was not prepared for that whatsoever.

Like even coming from like my own
business where I was using quite a

few different tools for different
purposes and managing those things.

Like my bookmark folder for like just
dash padd tools is, is, is pretty big.

Like we, we've got at least 12 separate
tools that we use for different purposes.

And while that's great and all of them
work really well, sometimes it's hard.

Particularly in my
position, it's difficult.

Hey, remember where that comment
that someone made that you

need to reference came from?

Or like, was it in Slack?

Was it in, was it a conversation,
Was it a thread in Slack, like going

back and doing all of that stuff?

Or was it a slab or any, any
number of, of different locations

it could have come from.

And so the ability to have this sort
of automated notes dashboard which

is, you know, the ultimate goal here.

Really, really appealing to me to be
able to create some smart stacks that

give you the information you need
from the resources that you use, the

tools that you use and combine that
with capturing your own notes from

one-on-ones meetings, code reviews,
all of that stuff is really just feels

like I would like to have that today.

Mike Bifulco: Sure . Sure.

Yeah.

I what I'm really interested to hear
about too is like, this is, this

is one of those great cases where
almost certainly you will be using

Dash pad as you're building it.

You know, probably both personally
and as, as a company, as a

team, whatever that looks like.

Can you tell me a little bit about what,
what your, like what your, I dunno.

Your dog fooding process is
like, and some of the things that

your team does with Stash pad.

Drew White: Yeah, so our dog
fooding process is pretty strong.

Everybody on our team is very opinionated
and also very thorough and not afraid

to speak up, which is hugely beneficial
both from like a development standpoint,

but honestly from a design standpoint,
which I spend a lot of time in.

And so we all use stash
pad very differently.

It's actually pretty fascinating.

Often, like, we'll go into like a spec
review or something like that and this

person will say, You know, I use this
this way, that makes perfect sense to me.

And then like I'm looking at 'em
like, I don't use it that way at all.

Like I, my mindset, my
brain map is, is different.

My mental model is different.

And so what's fascinating is
we've, we've kind of engineered

the flexibility to match different
mental models into the app which has.

I don't know, kind of just eye opening
for me, but I use it all the time.

Primarily with code reviews,
design reviews, that sort of thing.

Spec reviews.

I have several, one-on-ones every week.

I like to use it for them so I can both
remember what we talked about, but also

kind of measure my own progress and
be able to go back and look at some

of the things that we talked about.

I also do it.

Basically things that I want to bring up.

I also use it as a drafting
tool, believe it or not.

Cuz it does support markdown and so I can
do some longer form notes if I need to.

So I do like it as a drafting tool.

They render really, really nicely.

And then I also use it as
like a lockbox for data.

I know I'm gonna need in perpetuity.

I can keep a place for quick, quick info
that I just need to access all the time.

And I can know that everything
in there is always gonna be there

forever in the shape that it needs.

So and that's how I use it.

I also use it as a task manager.

We've got a great sort of
to-dos system and hierarchical

todos, which is super awesome.

So like you can create a stack of todos.

Which is within another stack
of, to-dos, that stack itself can

be a to-do so on and so forth.

So Yeah.

it works really well for
keeping me organized.

Mike Bifulco: I can imagine as an
engineer or someone working on a product

team, whether you're an engineer or a
designer or a product manager, whatever,

whatever your role is there's a lot
of value in keeping yourself organized

and, and making this thing work for you.

Can you tell me a little bit about
the storage plan for for Dash pad?

So right now, is it local only?

Is it cloud synced?

Is it something you use with like Dropbox
or Google Drive or something like that?

How does it work?

Drew White: Yeah, right
now it is local only.

That was a decision we made based on
some, you know, early feedback that

we had from engineers and, you know,
companies being very, we, we want people

to be very have the option to be very
private about their, their data and

not be sinking to and from the cloud.

But as.

Right now we are I don't wanna
put an actual date on it.

We do have a date for release, but just
in case things get pushed, you know

plus a couple of days, minus a couple
of days, whatever the case is, we are

rolling out sync in the very near future
which will give users an opportunity

to not only have data on multiple
computers, but also we'll be rolling

out our mobile app about the same time.

So yeah, we'll have access to.

Again, the whole idea is further reducing
that, that, that friction capture.

So yeah, we'll, we'll have cloud sync
available for a pretty small monthly fee.

I don't know exactly what it
is off the top of my head.

But it's very reasonable.

And I think there will be
a, a certain number of.

Um, like free sync sort of things.

And then the community version,
which is non sync will be

free forever in perpetuity.

Mike Bifulco: Yeah.

Very cool.

Is there, so is Stpa taking the
perspective that notes are a sort

of personal trove of information
or is there collaborative features?

Drew White: Yeah.

So I mean, our whole thing through
this has been, there are so many

tools out there for teams, right?

And.

There's very little for
managing your own daily work.

And so we have taken this stance
that Stash pad is for you, not for

your team, not for your manager,
not for even necessarily the

enterprise, although I'm sure we
will have enterprise level customers.

The idea is it's for the
engineer, it's for the user and.

That being said, we actually do, we
used to have a a web app version,

which was like version negative
0.1 or whatever you wanna call it.

That does have a collab feature that
we still to this day use for retro.

And it is easily the greatest
platform for something like that

that we have experimented with.

We've tried basically everything else.

We always end up coming
back to the old web app.

So, yeah, there may be plans
for, for adopting some of that

functionality in the future as well.

Mike Bifulco: Sure.

Yeah, I think it's, it is a good
angle to take or an interesting

angle to take, certainly.

I think a lot of folks gut response
might be that like having a

team collaborative tool is maybe
the, the table stakes for them.

But in practice, all of the companies
I've worked at that have reached any like.

Reasonable team size of, call it
five people or greater, tend to

standardize on like, what is easiest.

So and, and by that I mean like
things that they've probably already

paid for within the enterprise.

So that may be Google Talks or Jira
or GitHub or like the things that

are sort of built into that process.

But what I also like about this is that
by keeping it local and for yourself,

like it, it, it's a way for you to keep
your information, to grow your own sort

of stack of knowledge and, and to build
upon your own set of notes in a way.

That is you flavored.

I think that's really interesting.

And obviously you can still
collaborate with your team right there.

There are you know, ways to get
information out of this thing.

It's not a one way valve.

Yeah, yeah,

Drew White: And I think just based
on our experience using the web

app, I can't see that not making
it in like the collaborative use

case, not making it into the app.

It's just, it's too good to like pass on.

I just don't know where it
lives on our roadmap today.

Mike Bifulco: The perpetual
startup challenge.

Yeah.

When, When is it the most
important thing to build?

Drew White: That's right.

And I think a lot of people like,
I mean, we're a team of seven, so

like we're, we're pretty small.

And so we've gotta kind of pick and
choose our priorities, particularly

this close to our launch, you know, And
so we're trying to deliver one thing,

but a perfect one thing, and then we'll

Mike Bifulco: of course.

Drew White: the next thing, you know?

Mike Bifulco: Yeah.

So I'm, I'm curious to probe in a
little more about the sort of API

layer that you teased, cuz I know
that the, the team listening to this

will definitely be interested in that.

What does that look like?

What are the sort of hooks
you're thinking about?

You know, opening up APIs for.

Drew White: Yeah, I mean, primarily the
initial sort of main function of the API

is intended to expand capture essentially.

So the ability to send information to
stash pad from basically any tool or

any product, any project that you're
working on would be the primary function.

You may have some other
functionalities that come after that.

But yeah, I mean our whole thing is that
the easier you can make capture, the

more likely people are gonna take notes
and the better they're gonna retain

information and then ultimately the
better they're gonna be able to work.

So yeah, the, that, that'll be
the, the primary function there.

We're still kind of working
through the details on this.

This is on our current roadmap.

And I know it's coming
probably way quicker.

We're gonna be . It feels like we're
doing a lot of things right now.

But they're all very good things and
we're executing at a pretty high level.

And so we're trying to
maintain that, that momentum.

So I, I'd be surprised if this wasn't
out early first quarter next year.

Yeah.

Mike Bifulco: Yeah.

Cool.

I, I know your team.

So you said it's a seven person team.

And I, I know you've done
some of the engineering work.

I'd imagine there's a few engineers
that, that work on the product.

Can you talk a little bit
about what dpad is built with?

Drew White: Yeah.

Stash Padd is built with
react type script in El.

Has our primary shippable
form, and then the mobile app

will be React native actually.

So yeah, it's been, it's actually
been quite a joy to work with.

I know.

Our one of our engineers who kind
of does a lot of the electron work

definitely has some grapes about it.

He just wrote a blog post that'll be up on
our website probably at the end of today.

But yeah, it's, it's, it's a
great tool and there's a reason

that it's so widely used.

And so even with some of the, the
push and pull I think it's still a

good option, particularly for desktop.

And it allows us to ship to Linux and
Windows and Mac kind of all in one go.

Mike Bifulco: Sure.

Yeah, I feel like the electron's
perpetual thing is that as it

does more people want more.

And you know, early on the conversation
was mostly around performance.

You know we can't ship a
Chrome browser for everything.

But to be honest, I think that's
become less of a problem in recent

years as computers have gotten
better, as electronic self has gotten

better, as Chrome has gotten more
lightweight and all those things.

Or chromium, I guess not quite chrome.

Drew White: Right?

Mike Bifulco: And it's interesting
to pair that with React Native too,

which historically has had similar
things and has gotten tremendously

further along in the past few years.

Like building for React native now is
so much easier than it was in 2016.

It's, it's a much, much
more capable thing.

It's cool to see that coming around.

Drew White: Yeah, I did some stuff with
React native, just personal projects

a couple years ago, and I haven't
had an opportunity to work on any of

the mobile stuff Now my role is, is
pretty widely split between design,

engineering, dev, re and then some
higher level stuff, product stuff.

So, but any chance I, I get an
an opportunity to, to work in app

I relish those opportunities cuz
that's sort of what drove me to

this place in the first place.

But yeah, the we're, we're pretty excited.

We've got some, some really good
things coming out and I think they're

happy with React native today.

The engineers are don't, I haven't
heard much in the way of complaints,

so that's always a good sign.

Mike Bifulco: Yeah, I'll say certainly.

Cool.

So Drew what other things haven't
we touched on with Stash pad that,

that folks might be interested
in if they haven't tried it yet?

Drew White: Yeah, I think for me
it's the, it's really the speed of the

thing that makes it so much better.

Like I, I've been a long time, I, I
kind of bounce, I mentioned it earlier,

I bounced around from app to app for
years notes app that is and ultimately

landed on Apple Notes just because
of its, Sort of nativity as it were.

But it was always kind of like
somewhat of a compromise for me.

But I've actually just, I mean,
within the last six months have

like fully transitioned into
stash pad as a whole, primarily

because of the speed of the thing.

It's just uncanny, like
I think all of our.

Basic actions are sub hundred
milliseconds or something like that.

Like even like loading a massive list
of notes is just ridiculously fast.

And the other real concept behind it,
like particularly if, if you're like a

developer and you know, the importance
of keeping your hands on the keyboard,

like the thing is, is well set up
you can navigate everything create,

delete, you know, whatever you want to
do without ever leaving the keyboard.

And like, Super familiar, sort of key
bindings that make a lot of sense.

And so that's like another huge
thing for, for me in particular.

We also have like a shortcut,
like a global OS shortcut.

So you can open it up while you're,
so you're working in BS code or your

ide and you gotta take a quick note.

You can just open it up without ever
touching the mouse and bounce over to

it, dump your note, go back to work, and
just basically eliminate that context

switching sort of moment right there.

Yeah, I think if anybody hasn't
tried it that's listening.

It's certainly worth it.

It's free, so no harm, no foul.

You can download it, our
website wws-padd.com.

And yeah, give it a try.

Let us know.

And we're super active
on our Discord server.

We love getting feedback from,
from users even when they hate it.

Like we got railed the
other day by some guy.

He just didn't like the
interface like whatsoever.

And.

He was, he must have sent like
10 emails yesterday, I think.

But that's good stuff for us.

Like, it's, it's good feedback.

Like we don't mind it at all.

So yeah, I, I definitely think everybody,
if you're using Evernote or Notion or

Apple Notes or Ulysses or any of the
other ones it's worth giving a try.

It's a different experience for sure.

You may like it, you may
not, but we hope that you.

Mike Bifulco: Yeah.

Cool.

I'll, I'll make sure to drop a
link in the show notes here too.

And if people wanna chase you down,
Drew, where's the best place to find you?

Drew White: Usually you can find me
at the Whitewater Center in Charlotte,

North Carolina or at Fonta Flora.

Also Shta no.

Yeah, you can find me on Twitter.

Atul.

I don't, I, I, I spend a lot of
time there observing, but I'm

not like a huge content creator.

I like watching.

Mike Bifulco: there's a lot to
observe on Twitter these days too.

Drew White: Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

And then, yeah, that's probably
the easiest way to get ahold of me,

Mike Bifulco: Cool.

Right on.

Well, Drew, thanks so much
for hanging out today.

It's been really cool
talking about STA pad.

Yeah, come back anytime, especially
once you're starting to talk about

like opening up the API taps we'll have
lots of people with very interesting

opinions for you, and I'm sure you'll
get a, a bit of an onslaught in your

discord for people with feature requests
and things like that in the near

Drew White: Perfect.

We'll create your own
channel just for you guys.

Mike Bifulco: Right on.

Thanks so much, Drew.

We'll talk soon.

Drew White: thanks Mike.

Mike Bifulco: See ya.