Decentralized and encrypted alternative to Google's G-Suite
I am not a developer by trade. I'm a writer. When I was finishing my MFA in Creative Writing, I started to worry more and more about Google owning all of my writing, so I wanted to build something just for myself.
Graphite was sort of in maintenance mode for a long time by now. It was time to shut the company down. I learned a ton from the experience. Mostly, I learned about paying attention to market indicators. I had a built-in market when I launched, but I forced the expansion and focus into b2b. That was probably my biggest mistake.
Takeaway: In an emerging technology field, it's possible that an eventual b2b company should focus on the niche consumer until the b2b market is ready for the product or until the technology is ready to make the market ready.
For my newest project, I partnered with a couple other developers to build a dev tools product aimed at making authentication and access to web3 technologies simple. Well, selling to developers is significantly harder than selling to consumers. So we, focused on our existing network. We talked to people we knew struggled with the same problems we had struggled with in our apps. And we were genuine. We鈥檝e got a long way to go, but SimpleID (https://simpleid.xyz) has its first bit of traction!
After many attempts, Graphite Pro was finally released. I learned the hard way that doing team collaboration and data syncing client-side was next to impossible. So, I reluctantly used a server and a database, but kept information shared via the server to a minimum and almost entirely encrypted.
Back at the end of May/beginning of June, Graphite launched Graphite for Journalism. It became clear shortly after the launch that application needed its own dedicated space outside the original Graphite app. So, soon, Graphite will be releasing a full publishing app. From an individual blogger to the world's largest newsrooms, Graphite Publishing will offer full site hosting, site design, team management, and content management in a decentralized and encrypted environment.
Today, we're launching integrations with both decentralized apps and traditional apps. But specifically, we are launching an integration with Stealthy, a decentralized and encrypted messaging protocol. This proves out true data portability within the decentralized world.
Graphite has been at the Decentralized Web Summit, and it's clear there is a desire for better privacy and security in applications. But it's even more specifically clear that people was an alternative to Google Docs.
I am not a developer by trade. I'm a writer. When I was finishing my MFA in Creative Writing, I started to worry more and more about Google owning all of my writing, so I wanted to build something just for myself.