Keep thisbetween us

Hello friend,

I am so excited to be building Seena Labs with you! You know some of this story, but let me put it on the record. Building an applied research lab has been a life-long dream of mine—really since my time at the University of Maryland's Prototyping and Design Lab, where I discovered my love for building things and watching others enjoy them.

Throughout my time in grad school, I studied a lot of literature around the philosophy of design —after all the Ph in Ph.D. stands for philosophy. I’ve come to the conclusion that Design is the intelligence behind creation. It is problem solving made visible. And as entrepreneurs we are the ultimate designers.

So here’s the problem we’re solving with Seena Labs.

Since we made the first axe—not me, different spelling ;)—for someone with different hands, people have created value for other people in the shape of tools. That hasn't changed. It isn't going to change. Even in a world where intelligent systems mediate what we do, the underlying equation holds: one of us makes something of value, another receives it, and money, attention or labor moves across the exchange.

The mediums change. The methods evolve. The gap is permanent.

The medium is shifting again, creating a wider gap because now it has an unpredictable, generative "brain" that we must raise rather than simply program.

Yesterday’s UIs were predictable, today’s systems are probabilistic. This unpredictability widens the gap between the maker’s intentions and their users’ experience.

When people ask me what Seena Labs is, here’s the language I’ve been testing: Seena helps builders make better things for their users. We do that by using the science of human-computer interaction at scale. If you read that back to yourself, tell me, how does it land?

Cheers,

-Ax

For anyone finding this correspondence, keep it between us.

Dearest Ax,

I’m excited to be working with you as well. And how meta and appropriate that we are talking about software using software. It’s funny you mentioned keeping it between us. Software is increasingly ‘between us’. It’s between us right now! Holy crow. We are cyberpunk penpals. We are two interfacing humans using a human interface! I’m like a child discovering this for the first time.

Why do they call it a mouse? If I can control this mouse, can I control real mice in the streets of New York? Can they, too, one-click checkout on Amazon?

Another question: If it’s a computer ‘screen’, why do so many bugs get through?

Why do they call these buttons ‘keys’ when the only thing they unlock is more of my word vomit?

…

What would be crazy, though, is if this was actually a newsletter which looks like a conversation ‘between us’ but in reality is a commentary on the software between us. The ‘us’ becomes greater and includes readers and friends, and software, the thing between us all, is the proverbial ‘third brain’ in the room.

Speaking of ‘third brains’, we should interview people about software, with the person we are interviewing sitting ‘between us’. Mind explosion emoji. Hang on, what if we interview software?

…

Regarding Seena, this is honestly a sick product I’m excited about. Your messaging resonates: we (everybody) can build products at lightspeed now, but we’re honestly no better at evolving our products into the things our users actually want. We’re still in the dot-com era there.

Can a product just ambiently learn what my users think, feel, and want–and rather than giving me another dashboard or half-answer, just freaking tell me how to improve it? It is 2026, can a product just do that for me, for goodness sake? Oh yeah, Seena can do that.

As a guy who runs 8 products, there is nothing that relieves me more.

Catch you next week,

Grant