Muster

Muster is the oldest thing here and the one I’ve thought about longest. The idea, back in 2010, was to evolve the RSVP for casual get-togethers: a weekly ride, a Tuesday night skate session, Sunday pickup. Create a muster in seconds, everyone taps in or out, and the “who’s in?” thread disappears. It sits outside your work calendar, where casual plans belong.

Seems simple. It isn’t. Event planning hides a lot of subtlety even for coffee with a friend. What time zone does an invitation carry when it’s made in Nashville for Friday in Atlanta? Is location required or inferred from “Grilling at Our House”? What does a notification mean for a plan nobody has committed to yet? I’ve written honestly in the Lab about the difference between obsessing over a problem and being an entrepreneur about it, and Muster is where I learned that difference the expensive way.

Sixteen years on, it’s used mostly by the people I actually ride and skate with, which was always the point and also the limit. The reboot in progress addresses most of the reasons it stayed small. Some of those reasons were the product’s. Some were mine.