So, I started a thing. Then another thing.

Hey, I’m Kenneth, a software creator from Singapore.

Back in 2023, I launched my startup, Shopmatey.

It went well. We launched on Product Hunt, hit #2 Product of the Day, and got a shoutout on the ProductHunt account here. The sign-ups rolled in.

It was cool.

The idea was a platform for dropshippers to quickly spin up stores without committing to a subscription like Shopify, especially when testing new ideas.

But we hit a wall. Building the kind of app ecosystem that makes Shopify powerful was a massive challenge. We also started attracting users who treated it like a marketplace for used goods, which wasn’t the vision.

I tried to solve this by integrating Rye.com’s API. Justin Kan even liked my LinkedIn post about it. I was hyped.

Eventually, the initial excitement fizzled out. The core idea didn’t feel right anymore. I wrote more about that decision in Why I stopped building Shopmatey as a separate product.

That work eventually led to Omni, but it did not turn Shopmatey into the product Omni is today.

I first made an Omni prototype during buildspace s4, experimenting with Bluesky’s open protocol and some of the questions that came out of Shopmatey.

That prototype was an early experiment, not the product I’m building now.

Today, Omni is a personal AI companion built around ongoing conversations and memory. I wrote more about why I gave it a place to live.

We even managed to get the domains Omni.me and Omni.channel, a story for another time.

It is still early. Let’s see where this goes.