There's a specific kind of conversation that happens when you tell people you're building something. Eyes light up, questions start flying, everyone's excited for you. It's lovely.
That is not what happened when I told my friends I was building BuddyLog.
What happened instead was a pause. The particular kind of pause that means people are trying to figure out how to respond politely.
Wait — you need an app for that?
The pitch seemed simple enough in my head: an app to keep track of the people in your life. Who they are, when you last saw them, notes from your conversations, reminders to check in. A private journal for your relationships.
What I had not anticipated was how this would land.
"So... you're saying you can't remember things about us?"
Not quite. "You want to take notes on your friends like we're clients?"
Also not quite. "Isn't that a bit... cold?"
And there it was — the thing I'd have to explain every single time. Because on the surface, yes, a personal CRM sounds clinical. It sounds like you're treating your friendships as something to be managed rather than lived. Like you care so little that you need a system to fake the caring.
But that's exactly backwards.
The people who use systems like this aren't the ones who care less — they're the ones who care enough to not leave it to chance. Memory is unreliable. Life is busy. Writing things down isn't a sign that the relationship doesn't matter; it's a sign that it does, enough to protect it from the slow erosion of forgetting.
It took a little while for this to land. But once it did, something shifted.
The moment it clicked was when one of them said: "Oh, it's like how my mum keeps a notebook of everyone's food allergies before Christmas dinner." Exactly. Exactly like that.
And then they started pitching me features
You know you've won someone over when they stop questioning the idea and start improving it. Within about ten minutes of the concept landing, my friends had collectively become a very enthusiastic, somewhat chaotic product team.
The first use case came from one of the girls in the group, delivered with a level of seriousness I deeply respected.
"Okay but — can you log outfits?"
She explained with great earnestness that one of her biggest social anxieties is showing up to see friends in the same outfit she wore last time. Not in a vain way — just in a I-have-been-thinking-about-this-for-longer-than-I-should-admit way. The fact that BuddyLog lets you attach photos to events immediately made her a convert. Log the event, add a photo, never accidentally repeat an outfit in front of the same audience again. Honestly? Legitimate use case. Fully endorsed.
The second suggestion came from the group's most competitive board game player, who had been quietly listening and clearly processing.
"This would be incredible for board games."
He wanted to log every game played with every friend — what game, who won, the score, the memorable moments. Track patterns over time. Know going in that a particular friend always claims not to know the rules and then wins immediately. Document, for the historical record, exactly who did what during that one game of Catan that shall not be named. Who traded with whom. Who blocked the longest road on purpose. Who "forgot" the rules about robber placement.
The notes field, he decided, would be specifically for recording instances of cheating and the method used.
And then there was the third suggestion
The room had warmed up considerably by this point. People were genuinely excited, throwing out ideas, debating features. It was going well.
Which is when our third friend, timing it perfectly, looked up from her drink and said, very calmly:
"This is also great if you're seeing multiple people at once. So you don't mix up what you told to whom."
A beat of silence.
"You know. To keep things straight."
We have chosen, as a group, to believe she was talking about managing a busy social calendar. She has not confirmed or denied this. The subject has not been revisited.
BuddyLog does not officially endorse or encourage this use case. The notes field is for wholesome purposes only. We cannot, however, control what people log.
The thing about building for people you know
That evening ended up being one of my favourite memories from the whole process of building BuddyLog. Not because of the feature ideas — though the outfit one genuinely made it into how I think about photo logging — but because of what it represented.
People, once they got past the initial reaction, immediately understood the need. They didn't need me to convince them that remembering things about people matters, or that adult friendships require more effort than school ones, or that it's easy to lose track of people you love. They already knew all of that. They just hadn't had a tool for it yet.
I went home that night and, naturally, logged the whole conversation in BuddyLog. Notes, quotes, the outfit idea, the board game idea, the third suggestion that we're all choosing to interpret generously.
It's still there. One of my favourite entries.
