The idea for Avenue, the auto-updating address book, was born when I was a young mother of two small children, and pregnant with my third baby. My husband and I were moving houses and sending out Christmas cards in the same month.
Christmas cards have always been important to me. Not only do I love summarizing our family’s year and sharing it with friends and family, but I also delight in getting Christmas cards in the mail. The beautiful design, photos, and yearly updates from friends we haven’t seen for awhile are so valuable to me and help me feel connected to them even though life and other circumstances have taken us apart.
But keeping my address book up-to-date for this yearly tradition has proven to be frustrating and time-consuming. Many of our friends will move, but I can never be sure who has switched addresses and who hasn’t. Additionally, communicating address changes is inefficient. I may have jotted down a new address on piece of paper (who knows where that ended up?!), or I would know a friend text it to me, but the endless scrolling through our messages yields no address. If I have somehow managed to copy an address into my phone’s contact app, I can never be sure when I had done it and if the address is actually current.
This particular year, not only was I texting friends to be sure their address was correct, but was also sending our new address to everyone I thought may need it. I couldn’t help but feel the entire process was incredibly inefficient. Each one of my friends were doing the same work I was doing, which meant we were duplicating each other’s work several times over. And even with all the care and time going into my address gathering, I knew there would inevitably be someone I would miss and others that would send the card meant for us to the wrong address.
There had to be a better way!
I remember vividly the first time I vocalized the idea for Avenue to my husband. It was a cold winter night in November and my husband and I had a rare kid-free evening and a long drive on winding mountain roads to talk and enjoy each other. I felt only what I can describe as “on fire” as I talked through virtual address book connections and auto-updating profiles. At this point the idea was still so new and groundbreaking, it didn’t even seem obvious it should be an app.
We’ve come a long way from that cold winter night!
A fourth baby, another house move, starting three new companies with my husband, and several years went by. Through it all, I always had the quiet confidence that Avenue was in my future, and was something that would come to fruition when the timing was right. Then in the Spring of 2020, just after the Covid Pandemic hit the world, we decided to hire a full-time developer to start building Avenue for real.
And here we are with a Beta app nearly ready to introduce to the world. It is a bit mind-blowing just how far we’ve come. When you use the app, you might be surprised at just how simple the concept and solution are. This is just how it is intended to be! The reality of that simple app is that it’s taken years of my life to test, investigate, distill, refine and build a solution to the real life problem I experience on a regular basis. Most truly great solutions are born this way.
My hope for Avenue is that it won’t only make it easier to send and receive Christmas cards, but that it will make any interaction with the people that matter most easier; sending flowers to a friend that just had a baby, mailing a thank you card, surprising a friend with a visit. These moments matter deeply in a digital world that too often keeps friendships limited to behind a screen.
At Avenue, we want to make sure real life connection with the people that matter most is not just easy, but delightful! We can’t wait to see where the next few years take us as we introduce Avenue to the world. Thank you for being along for the ride!