Why I Built Kinu: Summers by the Sea and the Small Things

There's a photo on the wall of my old room at my parents' house. Two kids on a dock, sunburnt, about twelve years old. One of them is me.

It's from our summers on the Croatian coast. For more than ten years my family camped on the same stretch of shore, two months at a time, with a group of friends.

We caught crabs on the shore and turned whatever we had into a sport, and when we ran out of sports we made up our own games. Later, as teenagers, we moved on to talking about how to get girls.

The other kid is the friend I was closest to on that coast. Every summer the two of us picked up exactly where we'd left off, as if the year in between hadn't happened.

Two months a year

Those summers shaped my idea of what friendship is. Mostly, I think, it was attention. When you spend two whole months with someone, you learn their small things without trying.

At twelve you don't need a system for that. You have the whole summer.

The same attention, grown up

Adult life doesn't hand you two months by the sea. The people you love are in other cities, on other schedules, and the small things arrive in passing now. Someone mentions a new job over coffee, or tells you a story once and never brings it up again.

The attention doesn't go anywhere. You just need somewhere to keep what it catches.

People who notice things have always found a place for them. A list of birthdays on the fridge. A note on the phone with a friend's kids' names. Most of what I've learned about maintaining friendships as an adult goes back to those summers. It's the same attention, just given on purpose now.

I wanted a proper place for mine. And I wanted it for everyone else who pays that kind of attention, like the friend who always asks how it went, or the sibling who knows the date without checking.

Psychology, then software

I studied psychology, mostly how people connect and what makes relationships last. The friends I studied with could argue about life and people for hours.

Then technology pulled me in, and I spent years building software.

The idea for Kinu sat in the back of my head for years. No lightning bolt. One day the psychology and the software just stopped being separate thoughts.

Looking for the right tool

Before building anything, I looked for a tool that fit the way I think about the people in my life.

Calendar reminders came first. "Call mom" sat between "dentist appointment" and "pay electricity bill," and it felt hollow. A person I love, filed as a task.

Then I tried two personal CRMs. Their pitch was "nurture your network" and "follow up with contacts," which is how you talk about leads. I imported my Facebook, LinkedIn and phone contacts, and suddenly I was looking at more than 3,000 people I didn't want in there. I felt the gap between personal CRMs and relationship apps long before I could name it.

Everything I found was built for networking or productivity, and none of it for friends and family.

A sketch on my phone

The first version was a sketch on my phone: a quiet space for the people who matter, with enough context that reaching out feels natural. The address book could stay where it was.

That sketch became Kinu. You keep birthdays in it, and the stories people tell you, and the details they mention once. When it's been a while, a gentle reminder brings someone back to mind. No feed, no followers, no streaks.

Privacy was decided early and never reopened. Your relationship data is encrypted before it leaves your device, and the server stores only ciphertext. I stop short of calling it end-to-end encryption, because the sync key derives from your account, and the docs say so plainly.

Kinu is the Japanese word for silk. It's strong and gentle at the same time, and you only really see it up close. The small things about people are like that.

Two or three hours a day

By day I run Freshlab with my brother. It's a small design and development studio in Slovenia, and we build digital products for businesses.

Kinu gets two or three hours most days, which has meant a lot of 5 AM starts and some very late nights. It's slow going. The direction hasn't changed once.

Where Kinu is now

Kinu went live on the App Store on 8 July 2026 and on Google Play nine days later. You can also use it in a browser.

One of the first people to use it is a mother of two who keeps her kids' milestones in it. A review on the App Store says it better than I can: "It's a great app to remember important events in your friend's lives - birthdays (their children's birthdays), anniversaries... Simple to use."

More than 100 people have signed up so far, and more join every week.

The same thing happens every time I describe Kinu to someone. They go quiet for a second, and then they say a name. Nobody says "that's a cool idea." They say a name.

And since I started building it, I reach out more myself.

The photo is still on the wall at my parents' house. Kinu is how I bring that kind of attention into the life I have now.

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If you're the one who always asks how it went, I'd love for you to try Kinu. Start with whoever comes to mind first.

I write about building Kinu on X, early mornings included.