Shawn Reddy / Side initiatives
Built from firsthand problems.
I use side projects to test ideas that come from two places: the company I’m building and the personal brand I’m growing.
TWO INITIATIVES · REAL USE · ONE BUILDER
The relationship
Blurt comes from the way I work inside Team Nebula. EngageMate comes from the work of building my own presence. Each one gives me a focused place to turn an observation into something people can use.
Team Nebula initiative
A local-first dictation app that turns speech into clean text inside any app.
I started Blurt from a problem I felt while building Team Nebula: typing slowed down how quickly I could move ideas between meetings, messages, and documents.
Personal brand initiative
An Instagram story engagement service for maintaining consistent, relevant touch points.
I started EngageMate because growing a personal brand takes steady attention. I wanted to test how software could support those relationships while keeping each interaction specific.
The build loop
Start close to the problem. Keep the feedback loop short.
Start with friction I experience in my own work.
Turn the smallest useful version into a working product.
Run it against real use and carry the lesson forward.
The main thread
The products stay small enough to remain useful experiments. The lessons move back into how I build Team Nebula and how I show up under my own name.
See my main work