The Two-Sided Problem

Memex is a two-sided marketplace:

• Supply side: People running Memex (workers, developers, freelancers). They produce searchable work history.
• Demand side: Companies, recruiters, team leads who want to find and evaluate talent based on actual work.

Classic chicken-and-egg: companies won't search if nobody's there. People won't run Memex if nobody's searching.

The answer to every two-sided marketplace is the same: don't try to build both sides at once. Pick one side, make it valuable on its own, then add the other.

The Ladder

Rung 1: Single-Player Value (Supply Side, No Network Needed)

Goal: Get Memex installed on 500 machines. No marketplace. No network effects. Pure individual utility.

Why people install Memex today (without any network): - "What did I work on this week?" — daily/weekly summaries for standups - "Find that thing I was looking at yesterday" — link/context recovery - "Help me write my performance review" — evidence-based self-assessment - "Create documentation from my screen history" — automated docs - "What was that error message?" — debug archaeology

These are real pain points that don't need a single other person to exist.

Growth channels for Rung 1: | Channel | Action | Expected Yield | |---------|--------|---------------| | Hacker News | "Show HN: Memex — searchable screen history" post | 50-200 installs if it hits front page | | Reddit r/selfhosted | Post about local-first screen search | 30-100 installs | | Claude Code plugin marketplace | memex-plugin already built | Passive installs from Claude users | | Twitter/X | Demo video: "I asked Claude what I worked on this week" | Viral potential if demo is compelling | | Dev.to / personal blog | "Replacing Software with One-Shot Prompts" article (already written) | Backlinks, SEO | | Word of mouth | Every person who installs it tells 1-2 others | Organic compound growth |

Key metric: Daily active Memex instances (heartbeating to registry or just running locally).

What you build at this rung: - Polished install experience (curl | sh already works) - MCP integration for Claude Desktop and Cursor (already works) - The "wow moment" — first search that returns something useful from 2 weeks ago - Usage tracking (anonymous, opt-in) to understand what queries people run

Rung 2: Passive Network Presence (Supply Side, Opt-In Discovery)

Goal: 100 of those 500 users opt in to the public registry. They get a URL. They don't have to do anything else.

The pitch: "You already run Memex. Run memex publish and get a searchable professional profile backed by your actual work — not a resume you wrote."

memex publish --handle @yourname
# → Your Memex is now discoverable at memex.digitalsurfacelabs.com/@yourname
# → Your embedding centroid (auto-computed from your captures) makes you findable
# → You control what's queryable via your security policy
# → You can go offline anytime — your cached centroid stays in the registry

Why people do this: - Free, permanent professional profile that updates itself - Shows up in searches without maintaining a portfolio - Recruiters can verify skills by querying your actual work history - It's opt-in and revocable — memex unpublish removes you instantly

What makes this different from LinkedIn: - LinkedIn: You write claims about yourself. Recruiters guess if they're true. - Memex: Your screen captures prove what you actually do. Recruiters can search it.

What you build at this rung: - Public registry (registry.memex.dev or memex.digitalsurfacelabs.com) - memex publish / memex unpublish commands - Registry web UI (search people by topic) - Centroid computation (auto-generates topic fingerprint from your captures) - Guard model integration (so published Memex filters sensitive data)

Rung 3: Demand Side Seed (Hire Through the Network)

Goal: Get 10 companies or hiring managers to search the registry. They don't pay yet. They just use it.

The approach: You are the first demand-side user.

You know people who hire. Reach out personally:

"I built something that lets you search a developer's actual work history — not their resume. There are 100 developers on the network right now. Want to try it? Free, no commitment."

Target the beachhead: Companies that hire developers and are frustrated with the current process.

The first interaction is manual. You run the query for them, show them the results. They don't need to set up anything.

Recruiter: "I need a Kubernetes engineer with Terraform experience"
You: [run] memex discover "kubernetes engineer with terraform experience"
You: "Here are 3 people whose screen history shows Kubernetes + Terraform work.
      @joe — 14 months of captures, heavy k8s work in last 3 weeks.
      @jane — 9 months, terraform modules and CI/CD.
      @bob — 6 months, kubernetes monitoring dashboards."
Recruiter: "Can I see what Jane's been working on?"
You: [run] memex query @jane "what terraform projects has she worked on?"
You: [share results]

What you build at this rung: - memex discover CLI (query the registry by topic) - memex query @handle CLI (query a specific person's Memex) - A simple web UI for recruiters who don't want to use a CLI - Analytics: which queries are run, which profiles are viewed

Rung 4: Self-Service Demand (Companies Search On Their Own)

Goal: Companies can search the network without you in the loop.

recruiter.memex.digitalsurfacelabs.com
┌────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│  🔍 Search: "React Native + Firebase"      │
│                                            │
│  Results:                                  │
│  @alice — 11mo history, heavy RN work      │
│  @bob — 8mo history, Firebase + RN         │
│  @carol — 5mo, RN but more backend focus   │
│                                            │
│  [Query @alice] [Query @bob] [Query @carol]│
└────────────────────────────────────────────┘

Pricing starts here: - Free tier: 10 queries/day, basic search - Pro tier ($49/mo): Unlimited queries, advanced filters (recency, history depth, topic similarity), saved searches, alerts when new people match criteria - Enterprise tier ($X/mo): API access, ATS integration, team accounts

What you build at this rung: - Recruiter-facing web app - Account system (email + password, nothing fancy) - Stripe integration for pro/enterprise tiers - Query quotas and rate limiting - Recruiter analytics dashboard

Rung 5: Team Memex (Demand Side Becomes Supply Side Too)

Goal: Companies adopt Memex internally. Their employees run Memex. The company gets team intelligence.

This is where the two sides merge. A company that hires through the network realizes: "If this works for finding external candidates, it would be incredible for understanding what our own team is doing."

Alaska Airlines Engineering
├── Uses Memex network to find candidates (demand side)
├── Rolls out Memex internally (supply side)
│   ├── Engineering team: 20 people running Memex
│   ├── Org registry tracks who's working on what
│   ├── Automated standups from screen captures
│   └── "Who knows about Terraform?" answered in seconds
└── Their employees' centroids (anonymized) enrich the public network

Pricing for Team Memex: - Per-seat subscription ($10-20/user/month) - Enterprise features: org registry, topology visualization, standup automation, admin controls - Data stays inside their firewall (Strategy 4 from the privacy doc)

What you build at this rung: - memex enterprise install (one-command org setup) - Org registry MCP - Team topology engine - Admin dashboard - SSO/SAML integration

The Flywheel

Once Rungs 1-5 are working, a flywheel emerges:

More workers install Memex (free, personal value)
         │
         ▼
Registry gets richer (more people, more topics)
         │
         ▼
Companies find better candidates (demand satisfied)
         │
         ▼
Companies adopt Team Memex internally (demand → supply)
         │
         ▼
More workers have Memex through their company
         │
         ▼
When they leave, they keep their personal Memex
         │
         ▼
Registry gets even richer
         │
         └──► cycle repeats

The critical dynamic: people who get Memex through work keep it when they leave. Their data is theirs, not the company's. This means every enterprise deployment seeds the individual network.

Sequencing and Dependencies

Rung 1: Single-player value        ← BUILD THIS NOW
  │     (no network needed)            You're basically here already.
  │                                    Polish install, demo video, HN post.
  │
  ▼
Rung 2: Registry + publishing       ← BUILD NEXT
  │     (supply side opt-in)           Registry is FastAPI + SQLite.
  │                                    `memex publish` command.
  │                                    ~1 weekend of work.
  │
  ▼
Rung 3: Manual demand seeding       ← DO BY HAND
  │     (you are the matchmaker)       No code needed. Just outreach.
  │                                    Prove demand exists.
  │
  ▼
Rung 4: Self-service demand         ← BUILD WHEN DEMAND PROVEN
  │     (recruiter web app)            Only build this after Rung 3
  │                                    shows companies will search.
  │
  ▼
Rung 5: Team Memex                  ← BUILD WHEN COMPANIES ASK
        (enterprise deployment)        The team architecture docs are
                                       already written. Build when a
                                       company wants to pay for it.

The Numbers

Rough model for reaching ramen profitability ($5K/mo):

Enterprise is where the real money is. But you can't sell enterprise without a proven individual product. The ladder matters.

Concrete Next Steps

This Week

1. Polish the install experience. Run curl -fsSL ... | sh on a fresh Mac and make sure it works perfectly end-to-end.
2. Record a 60-second demo video. Show: install → capture → ask Claude "what did I work on today?" → get answer. That's the entire pitch.
3. Write the HN post. "Show HN: Memex — searchable screen history for your computer." Keep it short. Link to demo video and GitHub.

Next Two Weeks

1. Build the registry. FastAPI + SQLite. memex publish command. Web UI at memex.digitalsurfacelabs.com.
2. Implement the guard model. Can't publish without filtering. Qwen3Guard 0.6B is ready to go.
3. Test with 5 friends/colleagues. Have them install, publish, and let you query their Memex.

Next Month

1. Seed demand manually. Reach out to 10 people who hire developers. Run queries for them. Gauge interest.
2. If demand exists: Build the recruiter web UI (Rung 4).
3. If no demand: Iterate on the product. Maybe the value isn't hiring — maybe it's team intelligence, or personal analytics, or something you haven't found yet.

Risks

1. Privacy backlash. "You want to screenshot my computer and let recruiters search it?" The framing matters enormously. It's not surveillance — it's self-sovereign professional proof. But one bad article could kill growth.

2. Cold start. 100 published Memex profiles isn't enough for a recruiter to find who they need. Solution: focus on a niche (e.g., "Kubernetes engineers in the Bay Area") where 20 profiles is enough.

3. Quality of results. If the first search a recruiter runs returns garbage, they'll never come back. The guard model and centroid routing need to be good from day one.

4. Competitor with scale. If LinkedIn or GitHub Copilot launches something similar with their existing user base, the window closes fast. Speed matters.

5. Enterprise sales cycle. Companies take months to adopt new tools. Team Memex revenue is real but slow. Don't count on it for initial sustainability.

What Makes This Different From LinkedIn

The last row is the honest assessment. LinkedIn's moat is its network, not its technology. Memex's advantage is truth — verifiable work history vs. self-reported claims. The bet is that truth is more valuable than network size, at least for the subset of hiring where proof matters.

That's a strong bet for engineering hiring, where the gap between "claims to know Kubernetes" and "actually uses Kubernetes daily" is measurable and costly.