The last words of my father · Saint Martin, 2023
Those were the last words my father ever said to me.
It was a fateful Father's Day weekend, during what was supposed to be a family vacation filled with memories. We had docked in Saint Martin, unaware it would become our final stop together.
As we parted ways that afternoon, he smiled and said, 'See you on the other side.'
He never made it back.
In an instant, the plans we had for the rest of the trip—and the years ahead—were gone. What remained was a profound loss, a deep appreciation for how fragile human connection can be, and a realization that the people who matter most are often closer than we think, until suddenly they're not.
I spent years thinking about that moment. Not just the grief, but the physics of it. We were in the same place, at the same time, moving toward each other — and we missed. A few minutes. A few feet. The difference between crossed paths and a connection that gets made.
I'm a 21-year Air Force veteran. I've moved more times than most people have unpacked boxes. I know what it means to arrive somewhere new and rebuild your entire world from scratch — without any infrastructure to help you find the people already in your orbit.
Tangnt is the infrastructure I wish had existed. Not a way to scroll through strangers. Not a way to perform yourself for an algorithm. A way to see the people already in your world — the ones whose paths keep touching yours — before the moment passes.
There's an irony in what we're building — using AI to fight the disconnection that AI helped create. But our approach is rooted in something older than any algorithm.
"We didn't invent the pattern of connection through proximity. We built the infrastructure to make it visible."