About RobinLetter

At the moment RobinLetter is a single person project being put together by me, Samuel Minter. I was a long time TPM at a tech company you have probably heard of. RobinLetter is the most recent of a series of personal side projects.

In addition to RobinLetter, I run the Election Graphs presidential election poll tracking site during US Presidential election years, I cohost the Curmudgeon's Corner weekly current events podcast, developed the fully automated Wiki of the Day family of podcasts, and the Jukepodder podcast discovery site.

This is a personal project, not a venture-funded startup. I'm doing this because I've been thinking about the need for something like this for years as social media sites have drifted further and further away from being a good tool to keep in touch with friends and family. I hope this helps fill that gap for people who want a slower, more personal way to connect.

My mother's side of the family had a family Round Robin, started by my grandmother. My memory is that in addition to the family Robin, she also had a separate Robin connecting her college friends, which was in circulation from her college days in the 1920's all the way until she was in her 90's in the late 1990's, when only a few members remained. That is some longevity!

The family Robin, circulating between my grandmother and all her descendants, petered out in the 1990's as well, as first email, then social media and group chats ended up being more common forms of communication between family and friends.

Around 2015, I realized I missed the old family Robin. Despite all of the high-tech ways of keeping in touch that were now commonplace, it was already clear they just were not serving the same sort of purpose - fostering deeper, more thoughtful connections rather than quick updates and algorithmic feeds. I thought about something like RobinLetter all the way back then, but I didn't have the time, knowledge, or skills to do much about it. So it just hid away in the back of my brain.

Then in late 2024, a variety of people were vocally expressing their dissatisfaction with the big social media players and the billionaires who own them. Many people I know announced they were leaving. Some for alternative social media platforms, some just swearing off anything similar. One of my cousins made such an announcement.

Before they disappeared, I asked “Do you remember the old family Robin? For years I've been thinking about how it would be nice to have a modernized electronic version of that concept. If I were to set up something along those lines, would you be interested in participating?”

Within a few hours, several cousins chimed in saying they would absolutely be interested in something like that. I said no promises, but I'd start thinking about it.

And so I started thinking about it. In January 2025 I started doing some preliminary work on the project. In November 2025 I suddenly had a lot more time available, and started prioritizing developing the core functionality of the site. RobinLetter opened in invite-only mode for the first users in February 2026.

Here's my current thinking on how this might evolve: