Introduction

Fondfolio is a lifelong project that my partner, Fiona, and I started together. It began as a simple SurveyMonkey link with five questions about our friend Tyler and a spiral-bound book filled with the answers. We gave it to him for his 30th birthday at a bar surrounded by friends ¹, and while the book itself was nothing fancy, it brought tears and was clear that we had tapped into something deeply meaningful and emotional.

Fondfolio takes the same idea and refines it, making it easier, more polished, and widely accessible as a digital and physical product. Our goal is to capture the unspoken words—the ones we often think but struggle to find the time to say—and create a space where friends, family, and colleagues can express the positive impact someone has had on their lives. Too often we don’t share these things until it’s too late.

Anyone can create a Fondfolio, whether for themselves or as a gift for one or two people, and invite loved ones to contribute. Fiona designs and laser-cuts the covers and slipcases, then hand-assembles each book using coptic binding, while I handle the digital side of the experience including the website and apps, backend and checkout.

We’re not trying to be more than what we are—a thoughtful, meaningful gift that helps people preserve memories and celebrate the ones who matter most. Our success is measured not by scale, but by the heartfelt responses we receive and the steady stream of five-star reviews from those who have been lucky enough to give, receive or contribute to a Fondfolio.

The tech stack

The first attempt to formalize Fondfolio as a digital product involved a simple Node server with a React and Redux frontend. This was around 2013 and I was still transitioning from a designer with wordpress and CSS chops to a developer with a strong understanding of JavaScript. With the first release of Next.js in 2015, I was able to gain momentum and push through to the first proper iteration that we launched in 2015.

Fondfolio has been my playground for growth and experimentation as a developer. It has given me the space to learn, and a forcing function to understand all the moving parts of complex applications. I’ve been fortunate to work within strong technical ecosystems in my day job, previously at Shopify and now DeepL, and there is a bi-directional influence between my daily job-work and my personal-work on Fondfolio.

For example, I zeroed in on GraphQL very early on in 2015 and was a strong advocate for the technology. I’ve since moved away from it, but it was helpful to have a this experience at Shopify, which ended up being our choice for data-fetching on the front-end. Similarly, choosing React, Prisma/ PostgreSQL, and Next.js were a great combination, and we haven’t deviated from it in the 10 years since. From a styling standpoint, I’ve abandoned styled-components in favor of straightforward CSS and only rely on dependencies where necessary in the user interface. My goal has been to keep things minimal, lightweight, scalable, and built for longevity. There is no final form to Fondfolio. It is an ever-growing, ever-evolving project.

Footnotes

1. With huge help and support from his wife Christina. ↩