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Tl;dr: I’m leaving Zoom after two years to return to full-time indie software development.

The past four years have been transformative in the tech industry. In the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, I pivoted Vox Media’s events team from live, in-person events to remote, virtual events. During this time, I purchased a Blackmagic Design ATEM Mini Pro video switcher and was introduced to the world of video switchers and live streaming.

Near the end of 2020, I started the development of what would eventually become MixEffect, my application for iOS, iPadOS, and macOS to control ATEM switchers. I launched the app as a public beta in March 2021 and released version 1.0 in May. MixEffect quickly gained a following in the Apple-Blackmagic community. Its ability to visually control and animate SuperSource in Blackmagic’s more expensive switchers has made it an indispensable tool for many.

At the end of 2021, I was planning to leave Vox Media to go full-time on my indie apps when Andy Carluccio contacted me. He was in the process of selling his company, Liminal, and starting up a new Events Engineering and Client Innovation group within Zoom. He wanted me as his first hire in the group because he saw the potential in marrying some of the ideas in MixEffect with Zoom when used for production and broadcast. I wrestled with the decision to go 100% indie or join Zoom full-time. Ultimately, I carved out the ability to continue to develop MixEffect and other apps while being an employee at Zoom.

The two years at Zoom have gone by very quickly. I am proud of the work I did individually and collectively within Andy’s group and with the greater Zoom product, design, and engineering teams. Highlights of my tenure included bringing support for Apple Shortcuts to the iOS and iPadOS native Zoom clients. For macOS users, I developed ZoomCuts, an alternative Zoom client with even deeper support for Shortcuts. Zoom Production Studio was released to Zoom Events and Sessions license holders, bringing customizable layouts to their webinars. As the original engineering owner of Zoom Huddles, I forged a cross-functional team to develop Zoom’s video-enabled virtual coworking spaces product. At Zoomtopia in October 2023, we made use of a custom Tiles app to generate customized gallery views; this improved our event and soon yours as well.

With all that I’ve accomplished, it’s the right time for me to step away from Zoom and return to my original passion of being an indie software developer. It’s funny because this is exactly the position I was in when I graduated from Stanford over two and a half decades ago! At the time, I eschewed joining a tech or consulting company in favor of following my passion for developing software for Apple’s Newton MessagePad line of personal digital assistants. While I won’t argue whether that was the right decision, I will point out some differences between then and now. There was no financial safety net for me when Apple decided to discontinue the entire NewtonOS and product line in February 1998. Today, I find myself in a much better financial position to leave a well-paying tech salary on the table. Secondly, the market for indie apps has changed drastically. I no longer have to convince people that mobile is the next wave of computing. Everyone already has a mobile computer in their pocket or on their wrist. Finally, there were barriers to marketing and selling your product back in the late ’90s. Today, the App Store and other online storefronts make it easy to set up shop to sell your goods; the difficulty now is getting people’s attention, as the ocean of competing products is far more vast and deeper than ever before.

I’m greatly looking forward to what 2024 will bring. In the immediate future, I plan to update MixEffect and Wipe My Screen and bring macOS Sonoma support to MsgFiler. I have some ideas for other apps in the video production space too, so stay tuned!