Hey there. I’m Jason. My partner over there is the other Jason. Early this year we bellyflopped into iPhone app development, and by some accounts, these are lonely, chilly waters. This is some record of how we got here, and how we hope to survive.

Let’s begin with a the briefest of all background sketches; I’m a designer, he’s a developer. We’ve been around a while, and neither of us has ever shipped our own product. This alone is reason enough for us to dive in, no matter how rough the waters. I’m here today to tell you that if you’re anything like us, I want it to be reason enough for you, too.

Making our own stuff, after all, is the privilege of being people like us. Designers and developers, creators and makers, we don’t need to be chosen, and we don’t have to bet the farm, either.

Our material startup costs, for example, were extremely low; off the top of my head, I’d estimate that we’re just under one thousand dollars to get TOJ (along with our first app, Hereby) off the ground, with very little in recurring monthly expenses. Neither of us will break if this goes nowhere.

And it’s not like it always goes nowhere. We can’t help but admire the success of other app outfits like Realmac, and Supertop, and even solo developers like William Wilkinson (who assures us that even idiots like us can make this work). Each of them has an origin story that roughly parallels our own, and there’s some hope in that, I guess.

But it’s not only the potential for financial reward that inspired us to get in the game — in fact, it’s hardly that at all. Early last year I read a fantastic piece by Mike Lazer-Walker about a perceived rarity of adventure, experimentation, and — I think most importantly — art, in app-making today. I’ve been turning it over ever since. Whether or not you completely agree with Mike — and I think concession can be made to some fair amount of experimentation, particularly in interaction design — his call for art, and play, and his reminder of how little it costs to buy in, helped convince us we should make our own iPhone apps.

And if it can be said that Mike Lazer-Walker helped get us into the app business, I think it can be said that veteran designer Paula Scher helped get us into the business of business. In 2008, Paula gave a talk at TED titled Great Design is Serious, Not Solemn, and in spite of the somewhat forced metaphor of the main theme, a motivational subtext really struck a chord with me. Paula’s argument is, in her own words:

The best way to accomplish serious design — which I think we all have the opportunity to do — is to be totally and completely unqualified for the job.

These last few months at TOJ headquarters, we’ve found ourselves not only designing and building our first product, Hereby, but also designing and building the business of The Other Jason. This was an important revelation to me, and reminded me instantly of Paula’s talk so many years ago.

Honestly, I’m not sure anyone could be less qualified to start a business than us. Neither of us are visionaries, futurists, or business people — we just like to make stuff, and we’d like to get paid to do it. So that’s exactly what we’re going to do.

I invite you to follow along as we embarrass ourselves regularly. Hopefully we ship a product or two along the way that you find useful. But if we don’t, I encourage you to take that leap — as we have leapt — and to make it for yourself. Let’s discover together how chilly these waters are.