Project summary

I'm currently building Eusaybia, a company that builds tools for life development. One of these tools, is called Kairos, after the Ancient Greek word for non-linear time, the opportune moment. Kairos is different from virtually all existing calendar and time management tools like Google Calendar, Apple Calendar, Todoist, Jira, Linear, etc. It uses more advanced and higher dimensional primitives that give the user the ability to work with time in a much more fluid and dynamic way, while also being extremely easy to use.

It differs in these key ways:
1. Non-linear - it deals with multiple branching possibilities and contingencies
2. Natural - it aligns with cycles of nature, such as seasons and solstices
3. Long term - it works on time scales of years, decades and even centuries

The goal of this tool is to encourage more people to think in a long term and non-linear way. It is my genuine hope, that people and organisations will eventually use this tool to resolve problems in their own lives and collectively.

For more specific design and implementation details, you can read this article, which describes the additional temporal primitives and their benefits.

What are this project's goals? How will you achieve them?

The main goal of Kairos is to build an easy to use calendar that encourages more people to view their own lives, relationships and the world around them in a long term, naturalistic way. Such a tool would allow people to nurture their dreams, increase their own capabilities and generally lead happier lives. Once people better themselves, they'll then be able to use tools like Kairos as a supplement for real world action around societal problems and environmental regeneration.

Additionally, the mental models that are infused into our existing calendar and time management tools are extremely limiting and myopic, encouraging scores of people to only take a short term and overly work/hustle oriented view of their own lives and organisations. One only need look at the Notion homepage to see what I mean.

It is my hypothesis that, if a more complete view of time was infused into a tool and distributed, it would help people more rapidly resolve their own life problems, and once they do so, they would then be able to resolve problems at wider scales such as in their closest relationships, organisations, societies and so on. In addition to resolving problems, they would also be leading more inspired, brighter lives, more aligned with their innate nature rather than failing and outdated societal constructs.

How will this funding be used?

Currently, there is a prototype, and I'm solely building it myself. This funding will be used to hire additional engineers to accelerate the development of the prototype such that it's ready for a wider audience. Any remaining amount would go to fund my own living expenses, such that I don't have to return to a big tech job or do consulting on meaningless projects. Instead I would be able to devote even more time and energy on building and managing this project.

Minimum funding: $10,000

This would just be used to cover living expenses like rent, food, and utilities and extend my runway while working on this project. I would be steadily building on the current prototype such that it's ready for a small scale test (e.g. 50-100 users). The currently prototype is quite buggy and needs a lot of work.

Actual funding goal: $50,000

In addition to the above, I would be hiring a single talented engineer part time to work on the project alongside me, which would dramatically accelerate development. A portion of this would also go to hiring a single contractor for more specific development relating to libraries and frameworks that we use.

Breakdown:
$10,000 - Personal expenses
$35,000 - Software Engineer from FAANG for feature development, part time, 15 hours/week over 8 months
$5,000 - Software Engineers specialising in resolving PRs relating to ProseMirror, TipTap, Three.js, MathLive which are all foundational libraries used by Eusaybia. As needed, $250-$500 per resolved PR.

Who is on your team? What's your track record on similar projects?

Currently, it is just myself, working as a software engineer and product designer.

- Created Natural Scientific Calculator, garnered over 1 million downloads using a $150 budget
- Worked at Google, Marketing Manager Intern
- Worked at Microsoft, Software Engineer Intern (Microsoft Office team)
- Co-Founder at Stultus Studios a product engineering consultancy called Stultus Studios for startups and businesses.

I have a track record of delivering software successfully. If I receive funding, I would be able to hire some of the people I've worked with in the past, as well as some new faces and this would accelerate the development of Kairos and other related tools significantly.

These people include:

Rachel Liang - Software Engineer at Atlassian
Arno Gourdol - Maintainer of MathLive (a library we use), Director at Adobe, Engineering Manager at Apple responsible for Aqua MacOS interface (worked directly with Steve Jobs)

What are the most likely causes and outcomes if this project fails?

Causes for failure will largely be due to lack of interest in this kind of tool. I myself, definitely would use this tool, but as for whether it has more mainstream appeal is another question entirely. I would be motivated to continue working on it if there were at least 50 people who derive substantial value from the tool. Anything beyond this is just a bonus.

The outcome for this project's failure would basically be to scuttle the Kairos calendar as a more mainstream product. It would probably be relegated to some kind of internal tool for the company itself. I would also return any remaining funds to donors.

What other funding are you or your project getting?

Currently, I'm running off my own savings, which would last 1-2 years. Therefore any funding would help me out significantly, so that I don't have to return to big tech or consulting, working on projects that are not particularly meaningful or impactful. Instead I can fully focus on Eusaybia and tools like Kairos.

I've currently begun looking for grants, crowd funding support and am also considering VC funding too. Ideally, this could be entirely funded without resorting to VC funding, simply from user support, micro-grants and donations.