Why I built PostNotes
PostNotes didn't start as a product. It started with a diagnosis.
At the end of 2025, I was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. I've been a software developer my whole life, and suddenly the most important problem I'd ever faced wasn't technical at all: how do I make sure my son has everything he needs — my words, the things I want him to know — without forcing him through months of bureaucracy at the worst moment of his life?
I went looking for something that already did this. I found tools, but I didn't trust the way they were built. Most rely on a "dead man's switch": they ping you on a schedule, and if you stop answering, they assume the worst and release everything. That never sat right with me. An unanswered email is not the same as a life ending — and the stakes are far too high to leave that decision to a silent timer.
So I did what I've done my whole life when the thing I needed didn't exist: I built it. On PostNotes, nothing is ever released because of silence. A message is delivered when someone you trust confirms the moment has come — through a link you control. You decide who can trigger it: your family, a lawyer, whoever you choose. You decide when it's allowed. And if it's ever triggered by accident, there are ways to catch it and undo it. The decision stays with people, not with a countdown.
What I insisted on
It's yours, and only yours
Every message is encrypted in your browser before it is ever saved. PostNotes stores only the encrypted result — there is no version of this where we, or anyone else, can read what you wrote. That isn't a feature we promise. It's an inability we built in on purpose.
Released by decision, not by silence
Delivery happens when a trusted person confirms it through a link you configure — who may trigger it, when it's allowed, and how to reverse it if it happens by mistake. No pings. No guessing what your silence means.
No one left scrambling
After a loss, someone has to tell everyone — one of the hardest, loneliest tasks there is. On PostNotes you leave a simple list of email addresses, and when the moment comes, the people who matter are notified. Your family doesn't have to sit alone with a phone, breaking the news over and over.
Built to outlast me
This has to be here long after I'm gone — that isn't a nice-to-have, it's the entire point. There are others behind PostNotes, and keeping it running — keeping your words safe for as long as they're needed — is a promise I make to my own family as much as to yours.
The very first message ever written on PostNotes was for him. It's private, and it will reach him when I no longer can. Everything else — every feature, every safeguard — exists because I needed that one message to be safe.
I understood all of this the day I got the news. But the truth is simpler: any of us could need this, at any time. We don't get to choose what happens to us. We do get to choose what the people we love are left holding — a little more clarity, a few of the right words, a little less to carry alone.