I never set out to become an inventor. I certainly never imagined spending the next eight years and approximately 10,000 hours pursuing an idea that I believed could fundamentally change the way people write on their computers. What began as a simple experiment gradually became one of the biggest undertakings of my life. I was convinced that the idea had enormous potential, but I had no idea whether I could overcome all the obstacles standing between that original discovery and a finished product. Nor could I have imagined how much of my time, energy, and patience it would eventually demand.
Before all this began, I had already been using a text expansion program for several years, creating shortcuts for frequently typed words and phrases. I liked the idea of reducing unnecessary typing, and over time I had developed quite a collection of abbreviations for my everyday work. One day, I thought about using the letter “x” to represent the word suffix “ing.” I experimented with a few words and discovered that it worked rather nicely. Then another thought occurred to me. Since I was already expanding the abbreviation, why not add a space afterward?
That worked, too, and it led me to an entirely different question. What if somehow I could make the space between all words? That could change the way people type, taking something we have done for generations in an entirely new direction. I had no idea whether it was possible, but the thought was intriguing enough that I decided to investigate.
I began looking for patterns in the English language that might help a computer recognize where one word ended and another began. I discovered some useful patterns, and before long I had created hundreds of rules, followed by thousands. Within a matter of a couple months, I had something that worked reasonably well. It made plenty of mistakes, of course, but I could actually use it. I learned when to trust it and when to press the spacebar myself, and before long I was experiencing something that most people had never experienced: writing without having to press the spacebar between every word.
I was enthusiastic about the possibilities and began showing my prototype to just about anyone who would listen. Friends, family, neighbors, my daughters’ friends, business acquaintances, and whoever else happened to be around. People generally seemed to recognize the potential, offering enough encouragement that I figured I should keep Forrest Gumping. At the time, I knew that I was building a prototype and that many problems remained to be solved. What I did not understand was just how many. Looking back, I think it was fortunate that I underestimated the depth of the hole I was digging. If someone had explained how much work lay ahead, I am not certain I would have started. Maybe I would have, but I certainly would have thought about it differently.
Eventually, I wanted something more substantial than a collection of shortcuts residing in some company’s software. I wanted an independent software product that could work naturally with the applications people already used. With the help of an intern, we developed an online prototype, which made demonstrating the idea considerably easier. I could hand someone a phone and ask them to type a sentence such as “I went to the bank,” without pressing the spacebar. Then I might introduce shorthand, asking them to try something like “lmk” and watch it expand into “let me know.” It was enjoyable seeing people experience the idea for themselves, and their reactions reinforced my belief that I was onto something worthwhile. By this point, I was thinking well beyond developing a useful tool for myself. I wanted to make this technology available to anyone who might benefit from it, and I was beginning to understand that accomplishing this would require a much larger effort.
Turning that ambition into reality meant doing something I had never done before: building a technology company around an invention. I had already spent many years running an online book selling business with my wife, so I understood a fair amount about operating a company. What I did not know much about was launching a technology startup, particularly one that might eventually require outside investment. Around this time, I enrolled in Founder Institute, an entrepreneurship program that introduced me to the world of technology startups and raising investment capital. During the program, I began working toward formally establishing TypeShort as a company, including finding the right person to join me as a co-founder.
I thought of Ricardo, whom I knew from my MBA program where we had both pursued dual degrees involving Management Information Systems. Ricardo had programming abilities that exceeded mine, experience working for large companies, and a different way of approaching problems. I tend to be a slow, deliberate thinker, whereas Ricardo thinks quickly and approaches problems more quantitatively. Having grown up in Brazil, he also brought a different perspective. Importantly, he had previously attempted to launch a product of his own, so I knew he had some entrepreneurial instincts. When I approached him about TypeShort, he was enthusiastic almost immediately. We went on to establish TypeShort, Inc. together while I was participating in Founder Institute.
Ricardo also knew Pallob, a programmer with whom he had previously worked. I explained my ideas to Ricardo in my own language, and he helped get Pallob started on the software. Gradually, TypeShort was becoming something more than my personal experiment, although I remained deeply involved in the development and continued to work on the countless problems that needed solving.
There is something annoyingly difficult about building a product that does not already exist. You are trying to solve problems for which there may be no established answers, and sometimes the solutions that seem promising turn out to be inadequate. We experienced that ourselves when, after a year of development, we reached the point where continuing with our original approach was no longer practical. We needed to rethink the foundation of the software, which was a difficult but necessary decision. It cost us considerable time, but it also gave us a more sustainable path forward.
There have been other difficult decisions along the way. We expanded development beyond Windows to include Mac computers, and I still wonder whether we made that move too early. There is also a tremendous amount of behind-the-scenes work involved in developing a software product. I have spent considerable time building tools to help us improve TypeShort, while other responsibilities, including our website, software security, and countless smaller details, have added to the workload. Such are the uncomfortable realities of entrepreneurship. You make decisions with the information available at the time, and sometimes you will not know whether they were correct until much later.
Meanwhile, life continued, and I still had responsibilities at the book business. The books needed to be purchased, priced, and sold, and the business needed to operate properly regardless of what was happening with TypeShort. Consequently, much of the time I devoted to TypeShort came out of what might otherwise have been leisure time. But there is another cost that is harder to explain. When you spend years wrestling with complicated problems, your mind does not necessarily stop working when you leave your desk. You wake up thinking about those problems, go to sleep thinking about them, and sometimes find yourself working through an idea when you are supposed to be doing something entirely different, like having a conversation with your wife!
After a while, you begin protecting your mental energy. Even activities you enjoy, such as reading or playing chess, can feel as though they are drawing from the same limited power supply. It is not simply a matter of finding enough hours in the day. It is also a matter of having enough mental energy left to enjoy those hours. When you have lived that way for eight years, the experience becomes difficult to put into words, and I am not sure anyone who has not been through something similar can fully appreciate what it feels like.
Despite all the difficulties, I have never considered giving up on TypeShort. Despite the frustrations, setbacks, expenses, and uncertainty, I have always believed that the underlying idea was worth pursuing. My conviction has grown over the years, although perhaps not as steadily as you might imagine. Today, however, I would rate the experience of using TypeShort nearly 10 out of 10. I have been writing without routinely pressing the spacebar for years, using shorthand, relying on automatic capitalization, and letting the software help correct mistakes. Is it perfect today? No, there are still imperfections.
I know how much easier writing can feel because I experience it every day, and I want other people to experience it, too. In fact, I have long felt a personal responsibility to bring this technology to the public. I particularly think about students who are learning to type, or near the beginning of their writing journey, because I do not want them to waste time and effort on all the unnecessary keyboard work that previous generations have accepted. Why should they have to press the spacebar after every word, repeatedly use the Shift key for ordinary capitalization, spend so much time correcting predictable mistakes, or type every letter of familiar words such as “conversation”? Computers should be doing more of that work for us. This is 2026, not 2006, and surely we can expect our computers to take on more of the mechanical work involved in writing.
I do not know whether TypeShort will eventually reach thousands, millions, or tens of millions of people. I am unsure whether its capabilities will someday become part of the operating systems we all use. But I believe the underlying approach has a future well beyond any particular version of our software. I can imagine people using this technology long after I am gone, perhaps with improvements and refinements that I cannot even anticipate today. That is an extraordinary thought, particularly when I remember how it all began with a simple little typing equation: “x = ing.”
Today, TypeShort is super-close to the product I imagined all those years ago. There is still work to do, and there always will be, but I believe it is ready to provide substantial benefits to people who are willing to try something different. After eight years, I am eager to let that happen. There comes a point when continuing to perfect an invention can interfere with the reason you invented it in the first place. I want people to use TypeShort, I want to learn from their experiences, and I want our team to keep improving it while I devote more attention to helping the business grow.
Eventually, I hope to have people who can run much of the business without my daily involvement. I would like to relax a little more, take some enjoyable vacations, occasionally treat myself to things like music and artwork, and spend time with the people who matter to me. I do not picture my life being dramatically different, although I certainly have other ideas I might pursue. Perhaps that is simply how my mind works. But I envision having more freedom with my time.
As I look back over this pursuit, I have come to appreciate that you can live with considerable frustration when you believe strongly enough that you are building something of great consequence, something you will take enormous pride in once it reaches the people who can benefit from it. You can be enormously proud of what you have created and still feel the weight of everything it took to get there. You can believe the journey was worthwhile without necessarily wishing to repeat it. Would I do it again, knowing everything I know now? Of course, I do not mean literally repeating the past eight years. But if I could return to the age I was when this journey began, with the same opportunity before me, I suppose the answer would be yes. It would be an emotional yes, however, tempered by the frustrations, setbacks, and sheer amount of work involved in bringing an invention like this to life.
Eight years ago, I imagined a computer that could automatically put spaces between words. Today, I sit down at my computer and enjoy a much easier and faster way of writing. It is a very satisfying feeling, especially knowing how much work it took to get here. But developing TypeShort and convincing people to change the way they write are two entirely different challenges. I have spent eight years learning how to make this technology work. Now I need to figure out how to get people to try it, recognize its benefits, and ultimately make it part of their everyday lives.
