Why I built this

I have a daughter. She's young enough that her teenage years are still ahead of her, and I think about them more than I expected to.

The world she's growing up in is remarkable in so many ways. But I watch it pull people apart from each other even as it connects them to everything and I feel that tension in myself too, not just in her. We are more reachable than any generation in history, and somehow lonelier for it.

I didn't want to build something that fought against technology. That felt like the wrong question. Devices are part of life. They will be for her, for all of us. So I asked a different one: given this is the world we live in, what would actually help?

What I kept coming back to was presence. Not connection in the abstract, but the specific, irreplaceable thing that happens when you're physically in the same room with someone. When you show up, and they do too. That's the thing the feed can't replicate. That's the thing worth protecting.

Grove is my answer to that question. It only works when you're there in person. That's not a limitation. It's the whole point.

I built it so my daughter can have the kind of friendships I had. And so that I can be more intentional about the people in my life who matter. I think a lot of us want the same thing.