I’m excited to share that I’ve joined Doma as Chief Technology Officer, working alongside founders Jason Johnson and Yves Béhar to reimagine what smart home technology can be.

My journey to this company started as a pandemic hobby. All of a sudden I was spending all of my time in my 1880s Victorian home. Homes like mine are accumulated more than built, and the wiring just didn’t make sense. To get the switches to control the right lights in my office without ripping the wiring out of the walls, I installed a couple smart home products. Simple. Done. Better experience.

One thing led to another, and today every light, lock, switch, fan, camera, and doorbell is quietly connected without sacrificing the character of the space. No blinking LEDs or spaceship control panels - just technology that improves our living experience and gets out of the way.

This mix of an effectively timeless home and all this new technology got me thinking - what happens when we build smart home things with the same longevity as other permanent parts of our homes?

When Jason and Yves built August over a decade ago, smart home stuff was still in its “wait and see” phase. Products like the August Lock were designed to be easily removable if you changed your mind. Today, video doorbells, smart locks, and connected lights have all become permanent fixtures, but they’re still built and deployed with the same tentative approach.

Doma’s exploring new, more permanent ways that smart technology can fully integrate into the surfaces of the home.

Only with hindsight can I say that my career has been driven by curiosity about emerging spaces - from building CoTweet at the dawn of the social media era to cofounding Evernow as society has shifted towards improving access to quality women’s healthcare during a pandemic. I get excited about places where technology meets evolving human needs.

Now with Doma, we’re exploring how we interact with our homes as Apple, Samsung, Google, and others raise consumer expectations by investing billions into the space. The opportunity to help define this feels exciting and a natural extension of things I’ve been curious about.

I’ve been asking people what “luxury software” means for awhile. Nobody seems to have a good answer. I think the answer to the riddle is that the best kinds of luxuries are often quiet - the stitching in a well-made garment or the texture of its fabric. Luxury technology, if there is to be such a thing, needs to do the same - to let you feel something, even if it’s hard to see on the surface.

This is why I’m particularly thrilled to get to work with Yves Béhar, a design icon whose work consistently embodies design with purpose. Every surface and angle is considered. Together with Jason, whose deep relationships in this space make all of this possible, we’re building products that let the home feel, sense, and act in ways that make our lives better.

The challenges in this space are substantial. How do you build timeless products in a fast-moving space? How do you deliver hardware in an uncertain era of international trade? How do you give consumers confidence that the durable hardware they buy today will not only continue to work but actually get better over a decade of operation? There are a million other questions I have, and few easy answers, but I can’t wait to tackle them with the Doma team.

I’m grateful for the journey that’s brought me here - in particular, many thanks to South Park Commons for giving me space to explore over the past year - and excited to now go build something new. If you’re interested in joining us, we’ve got open roles for firmware and software engineering, both based in San Francisco.

Onward.