In 2015, I founded Gasket with a $1,000,000 seed to bring SaaS connectivity to Google Sheets. We assembled a team of designers & devs a full year before the Google Add-on Marketplace was announced.
Ultimately our ambition to bring pristine UX ideas to complex features did not connect with users. Our focus on driving an engagement loop with shareable 'Gaskets' would see pickup years later in Airtable's marketplace, though as a minor driver for growth, and a one-design-fits-all approach to data extensions has proven unpopular. This highly creative period of R&D mark my seminal years as a maker, and the Gasket team's inventive spirit perseveres.
Dan Foreman
I build artful brands and interfaces in San Francisco where I have been a founder, designer, developer and user researcher since 2012.
Gasket
CSV.AI
CSV.ai was a notable pivot for Gasket, designed to distill user interaction to the single act of drag-and-dropping a data file into a connected sheet for read-write capabilities. We embraced the chat interface trend of 2016 on top of our existing back-end, though the app did not catch on with users.
Arcology
Following Gasket, I focused on User Research as the essential discipline within product development that is under-tooled and under-resourced. I launched Arcology to give product teams a way to identify the valuable users in their user database willing and able to participate in user research.
Arcology App
User Research proved a challenging field to market new services, with few stakeholders vested in building out research operations. Ultimately, I assessed the market could support basic tools like research CRMs but not secondary services.
Illumo
Illumo was an open marketplace for B2B professionals available for user research. The marketplace lacked an initial growth driver and saw competition in then-new platforms like User Interviews.
UserSource
UserSource was a user research agency built on the high engagement rate of video interviews, with notable clients like Patreon. The goal for UserSource was to kickstart a participant recruitment platform.
UserPay
UserPay was a tool designed to take the friction out of interview incentives, built for San Francisco Product School's Product Manager course. Nifty & simple, with a trajectory conflicting with existing services.
