After Lucky4, I swore I’d take a break from app development, that was a small little project made for fun. Then came the moment every parent knows: scrolling through thousands of photos trying to find that ONE picture to show grandma.
“How did your daughter look when she was exactly 6 months and a half old?”
There had to be a better way.
The Birth of an Obsession
What started as a weekend project became a monster that consumed every free hour. After the kids went to bed, during lunch breaks – I was coding. Age Matched became my second job, except this one paid in sleepless nights and cold coffee.
The Technical Mountain
Photo management isn’t sexy, but it’s brutally complex. Loading thousands of photos without melting the phone. Calculating ages down to the week because parents notice everything. Making it work in 19 languages because families are everywhere.
Every feature that seems “simple” hides hours of complexity. That smooth age slider? Weeks of work. The photo grid that perfectly alternates between kids? I still have nightmares.
The Turning Point
Three months in, I almost quit. The app was functional but felt… mechanical. Then I watched my kids looking at old photos together, pointing out their first time seeing the ocean, laughing at how they both made the same face when trying lemons. Discovering these hidden connections between siblings – moments separated by years but united by age.
That’s when it clicked – this wasn’t about organizing photos. It was about revealing the beautiful parallels in how our children grow.
The Memory Map – my favorite feature for reliving where each moment happened
The Launch
Last week, Age Matched went live. Seeing it on the App Store felt surreal. All those stolen hours, all that lost sleep, compressed into a 6MB download.
Is it perfect? Hell no. But it works. And more importantly, it helps families discover those magical similarities – the way both kids smiled at 6 months, their identical wonder seeing snow for the first time, how they conquered the same playground at different years but the exact same age.
My personal favorite features? Creating collages that show the kids side by side at the same age – perfect for sharing with family. And the Memory Map, which transforms our chaotic photo library into a journey through time and space. Seeing all those pins on the map, each one a memory, each location a story – it’s like having a visual diary of our family adventures.
Side-by-side collages – the feature I use most
The Lesson
If you’re thinking about building something: know that it will consume you. It will steal your nights and make you question your sanity.
There’s something addictive about creating. About solving problems. About building something that didn’t exist before.
Just don’t expect to sleep much.
Age Matched is on the App Store. Visit age-matched.com to learn more. Built during hundreds of midnight sessions, fueled by the parental need to discover the hidden threads that connect our children’s journeys.
