Welcome to My Brain

I’ve always been a fan of the manta that a good idea seeks you out. If it continues to come back to you, if you find yourself thinking about it for months or years, and it just wont go away, there must be something to it, right?

The idea itself is for an EdTech app targeted primarily at Gen Z but can be utilized by anyone who wants to learn more. Apps can take a long time and be a long process with a big time investment, so I wanted to make sure I had something first. I market-tested the idea. I’ve pitched close confidents, my wife, her family, my friends — “So I have this idea for an app…”

The response has been overwhelmingly positive: “That’s a great idea!” is the common response I get from Gen Z’ers, the target audience the app would be for.

So it’s on to phase 2: building a pitch deck for it.

I considered taking the time to build it myself, but I’m not a natural coder and even with AI assistance my gut tells me it could end up messy. The app is not a simple construct with one or a few pages. I expect it to take a team, and a team means funding. In the past I’ve made a feature film, I built a company from the ground up, so I can build an app…right?

I thought it would be interesting to document the process here on my blog. Maybe by the end I’ll have a series of posts I can collate and reading them in order will form a path to making an app that someone else can use. It should be interesting at the very least because I’ve never done this before!

As a side note: I’ve already tripped and fallen off the starting line. The name I wanted to use for the app ended up being a no-go. I landed on it and loved it immediately. It was perfect. Everything clicked on that name. It evoked everything I wanted the app to stand for and it was catchy, simple, and relatable.

I wanted to call the app Gatsby.

Gatsby was, of course, a reference to Jay Gatsby in Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. Evoked immediately in-mind was Americana and the American Dream, success, wealth, accomplishment. I loved the idea of using an American literary reference.

A quick email off to a friend of mine who was a patent lawyer resulted in a URL to the U.S. Trademark search, some search filters related specifically to software/games/website. One of the results that came back was not an app, but there was some overlap. After letting my patent lawyer friend know, the response was swift and decisive: “exposure to a trademark infringement suit is high, based on existing registrations. Would suggest ripping the band aid off and unmarrying yourself from Gatsby.” I responded with a few followups hoping I could squeak Gatsby past Federal gatekeepers by changing spelling of it or capitalizing it. His final email response was simply: “Unmarry!!!”

I have a new name (my brain has already gotten to work “theme-ing” the app based on it) and have moved to the next step: lay it all out in a pitch deck. I’ve learned quickly — with the idea still on the launchpad — that so much goes into an app beyond the code. I’m also glad I had to abandon “Gatsby” before I sunk countless hours into a pitch deck or, worse, actually pitched the app with that name only to not be able to use it later. I’ll share progress updates on here as I go.

Now on to the next step.

August 10, 2025