In Which I Make Introductions

About two years ago, I was sitting with a friend at happy hour when I had one of those fabled “EUREKA!” moments. You know the ones I'm talking about, those moments you read about in “How I Did It” books, or hear about in startup podcasts, or watch on TED Talks, or suffer through yet again over Christmas when Aunt Mo is talking about how your cousin has yet another hairbrained scheme to hit it big.

My friend and I were discussing  an upcoming trip we were planning to Thailand, and I was bemoaning that there wasn't some solution available to me to plan the kind of trip we wanted to take. A trip that wasn't filled with tourist traps. A trip that gave me access to the places the locals all love, but that also scratched my bougie itch. A trip that wasn't totally going to break the bank. It was taking way. Too. Much. Time. To. Plan. This. Trip. I had a full time job on top of my more important full time job of trying to find a boyfriend. Ain't nobody got time to plan a Kate trip, let alone Kate herself.

What I really want, I told her, was an app for that. And the more I whined that it didn't exist, the more ideas started churning. I whipped out a pen and a napkin and threw my hands around wildly. By the end of the dinner, I had an entire business plan sketched out on a stack of napkins, and an app I really, really, really wanted to use.

EUREKA.

Only problem?

I had no idea how to build an app. Or build a line of code. Or build a business. Or do anything remotely close to what I was describing.

I figured it was only a matter of time before someone else built this, anyway. It was such a good idea. Someone else was bound to think of it and in this day and age of tech, spin it up and do it better.

But a year went by, and nothing.

I moved to a new city and started working for a bookstore that also runs the internet.

I started realizing that I, too, could learn to code.

I found an actual boyfriend who quickly became my adventure buddy (meaning that I had a bit more time to spend on ideation since I wasn't trying to find a boyfriend anymore and a lot more trips to plan).

I started wishing I had this app again.

I decided heck, if I could figure out how the bookstore internet works and how to secure it, I could probably figure out how to build this stupid app.

And so that's what I'm doing. Today I decided I'm going to build this dumb app myself and I'm going to write about the entire process because I want anyone else who has their own EUREKA! moment and a good idea to have an easy roadmap of how to make it a reality. In the day and age of an overabundance of information it can be virtually impossible to filter through it all to find something actually helpful, so I'm going to do the obnoxious work of going through everything to tell you what's best. I'm going to make a million mistakes so you don't have to. And at the end of the day, I'm going to build the best freaking travel app ever that will make your next trip to Iceland so jam-packed and Insta-worthy that Aunt Mo will be talking about you at Christmas. At the very least, I'll at least give up and try to sell it to Google and tell you how you, too, can get a major tech company to steal your idea.

Welcome to the party!