The Story Behind Backdrop

This week, I had the surreal experience of seeing Backdrop featured in Bloomberg Businessweek.

When I first met Mark, I had no idea that conversation would eventually lead to Backdrop being featured in the magazine. Reading the article was one of those moments I'll probably never forget.

But as exciting as it was, I found myself thinking less about the feature itself and more about everything that happened before it.

Because the story of Backdrop didn't start with AI.

It started with my daughter's first birthday.

At the time, I had no idea that one simple favor would eventually become the company I'm building today.

One Simple Task

My wife, Christina, has spent much of her career in the events industry. She's the type of person who can walk into an empty room and already picture what the celebration is going to look like. Planning our wedding made me realize how much I actually enjoyed seeing those ideas come to life.

So when it came time to plan our daughter Gemma's first birthday, I figured, how hard could it be?

Reality hit pretty quickly.

Christina was juggling a demanding job, planning a big event for work, helping raise a one-year-old, and somehow also planning our daughter's birthday. I wanted to help, so she gave me one simple task.

“Can you book the backdrop vendor?”

“Sure.”

She walked me through the process.

• Search Instagram hashtags.
• Find vendors.
• Send DMs.
• Ask if they're available.
• Ask how much they charge.
• Ask where they're located.
• Wait.
• Repeat.

I remember stopping and asking her...

“Wait... this is really how everyone does it?”

She laughed and said,

“Yep.”

I couldn't believe it.

Three Simple Questions

The more vendors I contacted, the more frustrated I became.

I wasn't asking complicated questions. I just wanted to know three things.

• Are you available?
• Where are you located?
• How much do you charge?

Instead, I spent hours scrolling through hashtags, messaging vendors one by one, waiting for replies, only to find out someone was already booked, too far away, or outside our budget.

Then I'd start all over again.

Eventually we found someone we loved.

The booking process?

• A paper contract.
• A Venmo payment.
• Then... hope they show up.

The Lesson After the Party

The birthday itself turned out amazing. Watching Gemma surrounded by our family and friends is still one of my favorite memories.

Ironically, one of the biggest lessons came after the party ended.

The restaurant moved the backdrop outside so the vendor could pick it up later. Some guests thought the decorations were being thrown away and took a few pieces home.

The vendor arrived expecting everything to be there. It wasn't.

Thankfully we found everything and returned it, but I couldn't stop thinking about how easily it could have been avoided.

No one did anything wrong. The system failed.

A simple reminder inside the booking flow could have prevented the entire situation.

That moment stuck with me.

Both Sides Deserved Better

Over the next few weeks, I couldn't let the idea go.

I started talking to more vendors. I asked Christina endless questions about how the industry worked.

The deeper I looked, the more I realized my experience wasn't unique.

• Organizers were frustrated trying to find vendors.
• Vendors were spending nights answering the same questions over and over again in Instagram DMs.

Both sides deserved something better.

That's when Backdrop started taking shape.

Not as another event website. But as a marketplace where organizers could discover, message, book, and pay trusted vendors in one place — and where vendors could finally run their businesses on software built for them instead of an Instagram inbox.

One Problem: I'm Not an Engineer

There was just one problem.

I'm not an engineer. My background is in analytics. I've spent my career working in technology, but I'd never built software before.

When I first started, AI coding tools were still in their early days. I tried no-code platforms. They weren't flexible enough.

So I convinced myself I'd learn how to build it properly.

I found an eight-hour YouTube tutorial. I remember thinking,

“Eight hours? That's not too bad.”

It took me an entire month.

• I broke things.
• Started over.
• Read documentation I barely understood.
• Asked ChatGPT thousands of questions.
• Tried again.

Slowly, things started making sense.

As AI kept improving, so did what I was able to build. Eventually Claude became part of my workflow, and everything accelerated. Features that used to take days suddenly took hours.

What Most People Don't See

Most people only see the finished product.

They don't see the late nights working from 11 p.m. until 2 or 3 in the morning after the kids were asleep. They don't see balancing a full-time job, a young family, and trying to build a startup one feature at a time.

Or the moments where I genuinely wanted to quit.

There were days I couldn't figure out payments. Days chat refused to work. Days I questioned whether I had taken on something way beyond my abilities.

One lesson carried me through all of it.

Momentum matters.

Whenever I got stuck, I stopped trying to solve that problem. Instead, I'd work on something else.

• Improve the logo.
• Design a landing page.
• Write copy.
• Build a pitch deck.

Anything that kept the company moving forward.

Eventually I'd come back with fresh eyes. Most of the time, I'd figure it out.

The Moment I Almost Missed

A few months ago, I almost skipped a local AI event.

My wife convinced me to go anyway. I showed up knowing absolutely nobody.

At the end of the night, I struck up a conversation with someone standing near the back of the room.

That person was Mark, a journalist from Bloomberg.

We talked about AI, startups, and what I was building. Neither of us knew that conversation would eventually lead to Backdrop being featured in Bloomberg Businessweek.

We're Just Getting Started

We're still incredibly early.

• Backdrop is live across the Bay Area.
• We've processed our first bookings.
• We have amazing vendors who believed in us long before anyone else did.

And we're just getting started.

I don't know exactly where this journey ends. What I do know is why we started.

We believe celebration is at the center of human connection. Planning those moments shouldn't feel stressful. It should feel exciting.

If Backdrop can help make even one family's celebration a little easier than ours was, then every late night was worth it.

That's why we built Backdrop.