I Joined Beeper to Help Build the Future of Chat

Today I am happy to announce that I have joined Beeper, a startup that is building the future of chat by connecting all of your chat networks together in a single application. I will be primarily working on building bridges to other chat networks to bring more people into the Beeper ecosystem.

Beeper is built on top of the Matrix protocol which is an open, decentralized communication protocol. I have been interested in Matrix since college (we used it for computer science club communications), and have been following its development closely for a few years. One of the biggest factors that has caused me to be interested in the protocol is that it is decentralized by design via federation. That means that anyone can run a Matrix homeserver and federate (communicate) with all of the other Matrix homeservers in the federation. This is very similar to how email servers can communicate with one another (you can email people on Gmail from an Outlook.com email, for example), and you can even run your own email server!

As censorship and authoritarianism is on the rise around the world, the need for a communication network that isn't controlled by a single party is becoming apparent. Decentralized and federated networks such as Matrix are key to breaking the death-grip that large technology corporations and governments have on communication. Additionally, the need for strong end-to-end encryption for communication is becoming apparent, and the Matrix protocol has encryption built-in.

I have enjoyed the two years I have been at The Trade Desk, and will miss all of my co-workers there. However, I am excited about this new opportunity to work at a company that is building a product in an area that I am very passionate about. In my role at Beeper, I hope to have opportunities to collaborate with other members of the Matrix community to move the protocol forward. I also hope that I can help make Matrix accessible to everyone, so that more people can benefit from open, decentralized communication.