Conversations with Ian Kilpatrick

Today we’d like to introduce you to Ian Kilpatrick.

Hi Ian, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
I was born and raised in Northern California. Graduated from Cal State Monterey Bay in 1998 with a degree in Visual & Public Art (basically I could do large scale installation pieces and murals) and quickly learned that the Art scene was a very difficult industry to break into. I didn’t feel like being a starving artist (especially being newly married) so I got a job as Creative Director at an upstart record label in Sacramento. I even joined one of the bands on the label and toured with them for a few years. There I cut my teeth on branding, web design and the music business until that fateful day when Napster entered the scene and completely changed how music was distributed. Napster decimated ours and many other record labels and forced us to close our doors in 2000.

After that, I took a job at a web design firm downtown as one of two designers and was again flying high. I was doing what I loved, learning about things like how the web worked, the importance of user experience, and the limitless potential of the still nascent internet. About a year after getting hired the Dot Com bubble burst and everybody with a Dot Com related job lost it. I found myself income-less with a mortgage, a wife and a baby girl. After submitting my resumé to dozens of businesses without a response I decided to humble myself and look for work at a local coffee shop. So the next morning as I got ready to offer my services as a barista my phone rang. It was a friend asking if I could build a website for the company she worked for. The pay covered 3 months of my expenses. I took the job and have worked for myself ever since.

This year marks my 23rd year of designing web/app experiences for clients, building brands and working on huge development projects for some of the biggest companies in the world. It’s taken me to places like Disney Headquarters, working the red carpet of the Golden Globes, even creating a wildly viral animation video for the Embassy of Israel. But the things I’ve enjoyed most have been my own ventures. I caught the entrepreneurship bug back at the record label. I couldn’t explain why but building something from scratch turned me on like nothing else.

I’ve been part of many startups since college but the most notable was a social media site I helped build in 2006 called BeenUp2.com. It started when my friend called me and said “I want your help making Twitter with photos”. My first question was “What’s Twitter?”. I figured it out and liked his idea so we started building. Our focus was on mobile photo sharing via email (keep in mind this was before iPhone and Android existed). We gave each user a unique email address that they could send pictures and videos to, and it would post in seconds to their account. Nobody had done anything like this before and the idea caught like wildfire. We grew fast but struggled to monetize because the online ad industry was very new and didn’t pay well. In 2012 we had to shut down the site. In fact, we shut down the same week that Instagram got bought by Facebook for $1 billion.

I love social media. It’s in my blood now. So much good has been done through social networks. But recently I’ve become disturbed by the direction the large social platforms have been taking their users. Surveillance capitalism is rampant and too many ethical boundaries have been crossed. So last year I decided it was time to bring back BeenUp2.

It’s going to be a healthy alternative to social with a business model that has never been done before. We will not spy on our users, assess their activity or sell their data. In fact, we will have no outside advertising whatsoever. We are taking to heart the now famous quote “If you are not paying for it, YOU are the product.” BeenUp2 will cost $2/mo to use, that’s it. $2 to post with peace of mind.

$2 Bucks for Freedom.

I have never been so excited for a project as I am for this one. The timing feels perfect and the excitement for this new platform is palpable.

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
I have lived by the saying “Calm seas make weak sailors.”

Needless to say it’s not been a smooth road. I didn’t expect it to be smooth, but the rough parts are usually surprises. Some specific instances:

– Early in my career I put everything into a new business and nearly lost my house
– Been done dirty by a couple of different business partners
– Faced rejection from investors
– Had many well-meaning friends tell me my ideas are no good

I found myself on top of Mt Whitney a few years ago. As I stood on the rock and dust above the tree line I looked down into the valley I had just climbed up. It was green, lush and flowing with water. That was the moment I realized that the mountain tops are great for celebrations, but the valleys are where things grow. That’s where the life is, in the struggle from glory to glory.

Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
MY SPECIALTY:

Since I was a little boy I’ve been fascinated with beauty and psychology. I love art that moves me, design that is beautiful and effective in influencing me. But I also love how the brain works. More so, how the mind works.

User Experience was a natural fit for me, merging form and function into one. Not just aesthetic but how an art piece or an app or a website affects a human being. What they see first, how they feel when they see it and what they do next. It’s fascinating to me how similar we all are, but also where the differences between us are.

This is how I approach projects and how I’m approaching BeenUp2. Starting with how a user moves through the experience, then we build the tech to support that. Good technology is expected, good user experience is what people crave.

If we knew you growing up, how would we have described you?
I’m a second born. Peacemaker in the family. I took a liking to computers when my parents bought the Texas Instruments TI-99. I would spend whole weekends coding what would amount to a tiny, 4-second, black & white gif.

I was also imaginative, dyslexic, musically inclined, not a good student, athletic and soft-hearted. Curious to the point of getting into trouble. Optimistic and a generally happy dude.

Contact Info:

• Email: ian@beenup2.com
• Website: https://BeenUp2.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ianpk/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ianpk
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/ianpk
• Other: https://IanPK.com