Trimbox cofounders Jordan Gaston and David Emelianov.
Courtesy of David Emelianov
This as-told-to essay is based on conversations with David Emelianov, a 32-year-old software engineer and entrepreneur, based in the Bay Area, and Jordan Gaston, a 31-year-old software engineer and entrepreneur based in Austin. Their words have been edited for length and clarity.David Emelianov: Jordan and I met years ago in elementary school. We weren't super close friends, but then we reconnected in 2017. We were both in Seattle, I was working at Microsoft at the time, and he was at Amazon.Jordan Gaston: A mutual friend of ours put David and me back in touch. I worked at Amazon until COVID. Then I decided to move to a smaller startup, where I worked for four and a half years.About a year ago, I made the jump to my current employer, which is a large FinTech company. Between working at Amazon and the smaller startup, I had about two months off, and that's when the idea for our app came about.Emelianov: After COVID started and everyone at Microsoft went remote, I decided to leave my job. I moved to Miami and worked full-time on a previous startup I had with some college friends. Then I moved back to Seattle and got my next full-time role at a tech company. After that, I moved to the Bay Area and have been here for two and a half years, where I work full-time at a large gaming company.Jordan and I had been working together on an inbox cleaner app since 2020, and when we started looking into selling the app last year, we were at $232,000 in monthly recurring revenue. At the end of last year, we sold the app, and did it all while keeping our full-time jobs.
