Kyle Kesterson
@kylekesterson · Chief Freak, Freak'n Genius
Many thanks @ryannegri! Hey all, I'm the founder and chief storyteller, working with a group of awesome artists and engineers, on this fun little experiment we call Campfire.
📚 Backstory behind Campfire
A little over a year ago, I found myself buuurnt out from 6+ years of running a marathon of startup sprints and hitting a series of walls. So I took a step back, spent the next year driving and wandering around the US with my dog, camping, and meeting a wide variety of humans in parts of the US and Canada that are so far removed from my typical city bubble. Many stories were swapped and relationships formed, most nights under the stars and around a campfire.
This is where it sparked for me.
It was in those moments that I began to truly appreciate, that throughout the entire course of human history, we have come together around the campfire to hear stories that inspire and educate, teaching us about ourselves, each other, our world, where we come from, and where we can go in a future of possibilities. Consistently mesmerized as the warm crackling glow of fire light burns deep into the soul, bringing strangers and friends alike, closer together. May sound a bit woo woo, but it was profound and reinvigorating.
It wasn't until I came back to Seattle and sat with one of my closest and most talented friends, David Wykes, where that spark started to take shape as we riffed and played "what if?" and "yes and...", then taking the concept to Startup Weekend in Seattle, where we built a prototype with Ryan Vanderpol. Shortly after that, met Bastiaan van der Weerd through the TechStars network to come on and help build the mobile app to its entirety.
David is a father of a little girl named Robyn, and one of the most cherished times they consistently have as a family, is sitting around and reading their favorite children's stories. David will admit however that he encounters story fatigue and "stale books", having the read the same books over and over, as well as the pressures of having to be a great storyteller, really competing with other forms of media and entertainment.
David has a strong desire to keep Robyn's love for stories burning bright, and as we take a look around and see the pervasiveness of screens demanding so much attention, see this growing battle, and something as simple as reading a book, is losing ground. Most of the innovations we see, as sexy and fun as they are, demand more and more screen time, which unleash a host of negative side effects.
So our experiment was simple. Can we bring the special feeling of connecting through stories around the campfire, into our homes, keeping our kids (and our own!) love of reading alive, without needing to be glued to screens?
The result is 🔥Campfire.
This is where it sparked for me.
It was in those moments that I began to truly appreciate, that throughout the entire course of human history, we have come together around the campfire to hear stories that inspire and educate, teaching us about ourselves, each other, our world, where we come from, and where we can go in a future of possibilities. Consistently mesmerized as the warm crackling glow of fire light burns deep into the soul, bringing strangers and friends alike, closer together. May sound a bit woo woo, but it was profound and reinvigorating.
It wasn't until I came back to Seattle and sat with one of my closest and most talented friends, David Wykes, where that spark started to take shape as we riffed and played "what if?" and "yes and...", then taking the concept to Startup Weekend in Seattle, where we built a prototype with Ryan Vanderpol. Shortly after that, met Bastiaan van der Weerd through the TechStars network to come on and help build the mobile app to its entirety.
David is a father of a little girl named Robyn, and one of the most cherished times they consistently have as a family, is sitting around and reading their favorite children's stories. David will admit however that he encounters story fatigue and "stale books", having the read the same books over and over, as well as the pressures of having to be a great storyteller, really competing with other forms of media and entertainment.
David has a strong desire to keep Robyn's love for stories burning bright, and as we take a look around and see the pervasiveness of screens demanding so much attention, see this growing battle, and something as simple as reading a book, is losing ground. Most of the innovations we see, as sexy and fun as they are, demand more and more screen time, which unleash a host of negative side effects.
So our experiment was simple. Can we bring the special feeling of connecting through stories around the campfire, into our homes, keeping our kids (and our own!) love of reading alive, without needing to be glued to screens?
The result is 🔥Campfire. 3sharetweet・