We're Still Here

Three Years of Glass

The other day, I woke up and couldn’t get the words — we’re still here — out of my head. For the past month or so, Daniel has been pushing us to celebrate our anniversary. While I wasn’t opposed, it didn’t seem that important to me.

Focusing on supporting the final push to get Series over the finish line, on member requests, on wrapping up the marketing materials for Series, on our next set of features, on next year, on taxes, on churn, on on on. All of it seems more pressing. There are only four of us building Glass, which means we have to be hyper-focused on how we’re spending our time.

But that also means it’s often too easy to get wrapped up in the day-to-day. The urgent over the important. And all I could think about is how we’re still here, and how important that feels. We’re so grateful to be able to build Glass. As we begin our fourth year, I’m feeling reflective about how far we’ve come, where we sit within the broader internet landscape, and what’s next.

The Context When We Launched

We launched back in August 2021, which is only a short three years ago and an eternity on The Internet. We launched into NFTs (oof), the broader Crypto hype cycle (now AI), a global pandemic (still going), Clubhouse (remember that?), and everyone starting a Discord (oops). Twitter wasn’t owned by, well, you know, and everyone thought Meta Facebook and Instagram were destroying whatever was left of a positive social media space.

We were blown away by our launch — people poured all their wants and desires into Glass. “Instagram replacement” was bandied about, and tens of thousands joined. We didn’t resist the label of IG-replacement, though it didn’t quite fit. We wanted to create a specific instance of what was once a lovely space for photographers, an even earlier version of the sort of community that lived on Flickr — a true home and online community for photographers. It seemed daunting, but we were excited, and the rush of the launch came with it some serious wind in our sails. It’s wild to think we launched as an iOS-only app that, while very polished, had very few features — a chronological feed of the people you were following and only comments.

Our biggest innovation, which we still deeply believe in, is that we’re subscription-only. To participate in Glass, you need to be a member. It flies in the face of nearly all social spaces where the chase for network effects leads to free*.

*Please ignore that they’ve tracked you across the entire internet, know everything about you, and sell that information for buckets of cash so they can sell you stuff you don’t need.

We took an entirely different route — we self-funded and bootstrapped Glass from the start. And that’s why we’re still here. I don’t want to bore you with a full list of everything we’ve launched in three years (that’s what our About page is for).

The Context We Exist In Now

The amount of time we’re spending online is only increasing. Despite our own concerns about that, it shows no signs of slowing down. If our only option for spending social time online is being inundated by commercial interests and manipulated to stay engaged, then we’ve lost.

We desperately need alternatives. I’m a proponent of open source and community driven projects, but after three years of running Glass it’s so clear to me that these sorts of online spaces need sustainable business models to both remain independent and continue to grow and flourish. They need stewardship, ways to consistently pay server storage costs, image processing costs, and all the ongoing maintenance running that infrastructure entails. Relying on volunteers and goodwill isn’t a sustainable path forward. It’s why I’m so thankful to all our past, current, and future members for all your financial support and belief in Glass.

Glass has been our attempt to provide a roadmap for more spaces like it to emerge. It’s our love letter to an internet we’ve lost sight of. While we’re not there yet, we’ve got a few huge things going for us. We’re still independent. Instead of being beholden to investors, we get to focus on what our members want, without promises of a wildly different and unattainable collection of products. We’ve got a business model that scales and grows as we grow — not in a decade, not after we’ve reached some magical, secret level of success. And we’re still here.

Our secret weapon, and I’d say this goes for almost all bootstrapped businesses, is our perseverance. We’re not expected to grow 5x year over year. We’re taking the slower, more methodical path that addresses member concerns and grows the business in a sustainable way. It lets us think differently, and provide something truly unique on the Internet.

Moving Forward

Your belief in us allows us to stay focused on everything our members want, and to stay idealistic about our goal of a more earnest Internet. An Internet where social spaces aren’t exclusively social media. Spaces where you don’t have to sell your latest newsletter subscription or headshot deal. Those spaces are useful, transactional, a bit demoralizing, but they don’t fill the soul. Thanks for giving us an opportunity to do just that.

I’m truly excited about the years ahead for Glass. We’re launching Series in a handful of weeks to all members. It’s such a special way to share a collection of photos both within our community but also externally. They’re simple, beautiful, and grow with you as your photography grows. You’re going to love it.

Thank you for giving us an opportunity to help you fall in love with photography again. You’re the reason we’re still here.

— Tom