Un-introducing IO

One of the rules of being a small team running a small business is: choose your battles. Last week, one of the most famous product designers in the world, if not the most famous, announced a secretive product that he had sold to OpenAI for $6.5bn. The designer is of course Jony Ive, and the product is io.

It’s flattering that one of the most influential people in tech would land on a product name that we had chosen to label our new product. Realistically, though, the IO name felt a bit silly and whimsical. I’m not an absolute AI sceptic, and I do enjoy the hustle and bustle of tech hype cycles as much as the next, but I think there’s room for healthy scepticism around the OpenAI news.

Scepticism aside, I do think there’s no sense in Team Tito making use of the IO brand in any long-term plans.

“IO” in tech means “input-output”, so I see the sense of it in an AI-centric hardwear device. For us, it meant “invitation only”, which is where we put most of our effort in the early development of the new app.

For the short-term, we’ll continue working on our next-generation platform. In some ways, for some use-cases, IO is far more capable than our classic app, and we’re taking that spirit along in building it: solving each use-case with care and attention derived from years of experience building our classic app.

While IO remains invitation only as an app, I see no reason to rush into making a change, simply because the sum total of people this affects is so small.

Over the next few months, we’ll figure out a new name and brand that aligns with what we’re trying to do: building the most flexible and easy to use event platform out there.

In the meantime, if Jony Ive wants a next-gen event registration platform built for people who care deeply about their brand—to invite all of the celebs to his inevitable swanky launch parties—well, I know a very cleverly-named app that will do just that.