About Robin Letter
Who is doing this?
At the moment Robin Letter is a single person project being put together by me, Samuel Minter. I'm a long time TPM at a tech company you have probably heard of. Robin Letter is the most recent of a series of personal side projects.
In addition to Robin Letter, 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, and developed the fully automated Wiki of the Day family of podcasts.
While just in the very earliest stages, Robin Letter is the most involved personal project I've attempted so far, and the first that will involve having user accounts, with different users seeing different things and contributing their own content, and all the privacy implications that come along with that, rather than me just putting out a website or podcast or something for the world to see.
And yes, I'm using AI assistance to augment my own skillset. I'm well aware of the limitations and recent security concerns with AI applications, and I'm committed to prioritizing user privacy and data security throughout development.
Nature of the Project
This is a personal project, not a venture-funded startup. I'm managing no more than an hour or two a week of my very limited spare time to work on this project, so progress is slow. But I'm hoping to have some basic functionality ready to test by the end of 2025.
I may get stalled. This may end up being nothing other than vaporware. It may end up being something that nobody beyond my immediate friends and family ever look at, and they may not even like it. But I'm doing this because I want to finish it, and I hope friends and family will like and use it, and it will grow to more and more users, and I'll need to worry about and figure out scaling to keep up with user growth.
Origin of the Project
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 Robin Letter 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 first started writing some high-level requirements and other documentation, picked the domain name, etc. With the limited time I have available, almost everything that has happened since then is just preparatory. Planning. Building some reusable UI components. Things like that. But as I write this “About” page, I'm almost ready to start trying to build actual functionality.
I'm excited to get going for real.
Initial Planned Milestones
Here's my current thinking on how this might evolve:
Phase 1: Alpha
I'll build the absolute bare minimum for Robin functionality. Having users who can log in, contribute text-based content, view the contributions of others in the Robin, and manage the basic turn-taking functions core to the Robin concept. I'll manually set up a handful of Robins made up of my own friends and family, to see how it works and collect basic feedback.
Phase 2: Beta
I'll add the ability for users to create their own Robins and therefore invite in more people allowing for organic growth. Allow images in Robin updates. If there are others who have expressed interest, I'll start inviting those people in as well. Start addressing issues that come with any increased level of usage.
Phase 3: Beyond
Explore monetization options to try to make the site at least pay for itself - for instance, charging a small fee for inviting additional people beyond an initial free tier. Start adding in user requested features, look at scaling needs as appropriate, more advanced Robin management features (shared Robin ownership, moderation, dealing with members joining or leaving mid-flight, etc.), possible app versions in addition to the website, better ways to notify users of activity, etc.