A solo studio · San Francisco
A studio of small, magical apps — designed and built solo, shipped in the open.
I'm an engineer-turned-founder in San Francisco. My number one is Book of Glows — a magic app, a pocket of everyday wonder — with a whole constellation of apps behind it. This is the real, in-progress version. Fog and all.
Scroll into the fog
The Studio
A theme runs through all of them: take something fuzzy and human — story, taste, connection, joy — and turn it into something you can hold.
My number one. A living book of light: cinematic, interactive ritual "channels" you tune into. Tell it what you need and the right glowing, breathing ritual plays — everyday enchantment that works on your phone and casts to your TV. The Calm of the mystical world, but interactive.
An AI companion for people with invisible illness — chronic fatigue, ADHD, autoimmune. You talk to it, and it plans your day around your real energy; on the hard days it offers comfort and ritual instead of a to-do list.
The Substack of graphic novels — a home for making and publishing illustrated stories people can read on their phones. My own graphic novel (and audiobook) is the first one in it.
A 22-inch plush character — soft champagne fur, brushed-silver panels, a little starry screen-face and antenna. A joyful robot-ish friend: a real product and a character to build a world around.
"ChatGPT for social dynamics." I screenshot every conversation — this reads the patterns across them: reciprocity, tone, who's pulling away.
A film in development about Jerry Rubin — the 1960s radical who became the original yuppie. The Yippie-to-Yuppie turn: ambition, reinvention, and the glow and cost of the 1980s, told through one unforgettable figure.
Someday
More than a coworking space — a community and social club for women to work, build, and belong. Desks and quiet focus by day; dinners, gatherings, and events by night (men welcome on the social evenings). The companies are the lights; this is the house I want to light them in. Not yet — but it's where all of this is headed.
Who I am
I'm an engineer-turned-founder in San Francisco, and I run a small studio of apps on my own — I design, build, and ship each one end to end. Rather than bet everything on a single idea, I tend a few at once, led by the ones with real magic in them.
Writing is my first language. I think on the page, I ship in public, and I'd rather show the real, in-progress version than a polished story that isn't true yet. I build with AI as a co-builder — it's how one person ships a whole studio at once.
The thread through everything is the same: take something fuzzy and human — story, taste, connection, light — and turn it into something you can hold. A little technology, a little magic. I believe in fit, not fixing — the right shape for a person, a product, a life.
And I'm doing it here, in the fog — finding my people, finding my footing, building the thing while it's still becoming. That's the part I'm proudest of.
Track record
Before the studio, I spent 10+ years as a senior and principal engineer building consumer products used by millions — and fell hard for the place where engineering meets design.
I've led and solely owned products end to end — frontend, backend, admin, and deployment — across real-estate marketplaces, music streaming, social & events, and fintech: credit-card application flows, banking onboarding, and payment systems moving millions a year. I built a real-time chat app from scratch, architected personalized feeds, and optimized some of the highest-traffic pages on the consumer web.
What ties it all together is design. I care how a thing feels in the hand — the taste, the polish, the small decisions most people skip. I build like a designer and design like an engineer.
B.S. Computer Science, cum laude.
A standing offer
Not a bit. An actual proposal.
I'm looking for the ones who want to commit — not flirt with the idea of building something that lasts.
Marry me if you…
I'm betting my life on the honest kind of ambition: many real things, made right, with people in it for the long marriage — not the quick date.
Put a ring on the build →Collaborators, believers, romantics, and term sheets welcome. Find me at @julietbuilds.
Find me
One handle, everywhere — every light points back to the build log.