Divorcing Loom: A Brief History of My Love Affair with Tella

Table of Contents

• How I Discovered Tella
• The Aha Moment: Love at First Slight
• Who Am I? And more importantly, why should it matter to Tella?
• Interesting Fact(s) 📠 About Me
• Thank you
• Colophon & Behind The Scenes

This is my public applicant submission to Tella for their Partnerships & Business Development position. Whether or not I get the job, I had a helluva lot of fun making this.

How I Discovered Tella

Hey @9ranty, super impressed with what you and @lepaulb have done with Tella. I quit Loom as soon as I saw your homepage. Been a happy customer ever since. I'm thinking of building my own product. Can you give any tips on building a simple, viral product from your experience?

— David Gagne (@buildpax) July 3, 2024

I was a Loom user for a while. Then it started getting very buggy. I can’t remember exactly how, but I’d seen Tella mentioned online somewhere.

The Aha Moment: Love at First Slight

Loom was already in the doghouse for me. But when I saw that Tella removes the application UI from the videos, it was like receiving manna from the UI/Ux heaven for me. I dropped Loom like a bad habit.

Who Am I? And more importantly, why should it matter to Tella?

Since you have my résumé, I won’t bore you with my credentials here. Instead I’ll tell you what you don’t get from the PDF.

Creative Hustler: I bring a unique blend of creativity, technical skills, and marketing expertise that thrives in fast-paced, innovation-driven environments—perfect for a team like Tella focused on storytelling and user empowerment.

Customer-Centric Problem Solver: I excel at identifying pain points, designing solutions, and building products and processes that simplify complexity and create delightful user experiences, which aligns with Tella’s mission to make communication seamless and impactful.

Lifelong Learner: I’m deeply curious and always evolving, combining insights from diverse projects—like developing web solutions, digital marketing tools, and user-first products—to contribute fresh ideas and meaningful impact to the teams I join.

Interesting Fact(s) 📠 About Me

I was originally born David Kidd Lewis. I was adopted at 11 years old. And I’m the youngest sibling in my biological family and the oldest in my adopted family.

From left to right: My brothers and I a very long time ago. Me with the VWAG blimp crew. And my Harvard student ID.

I know more about blimps (yes, those blimps) than most people. And I was a D student throughout grade school, then got accepted to Harvard before graduating high school.

Thank You

Grant and the rest of the Tella team, thank you for considering me for the position. I’d love to be part of what you all are building if you feel there’s a good fit.

Colophon & Behind The Scenes

If you’re interested in seeing the draft, here it is: behind-the-scenes draft.

Font and color background used in the slides is from Tella’s brand identity. And I’m sick as a dog today as I write this with a sinus infection. But the old steel magnate had it right when he said…

Anything in life worth having is worth working for

Andrew Carnegie, American Industrialist