I Heart Travel

At I Heart Travel, our mission is to get you out of the house and exploring your surroundings. We believe real-world experiences are the secret to a happy and healthy life. You could say we’re kinda like the anti-metaverse.

Fotospot

Fotospot is a bootstrapped travel community and road trip app for iOS that surfaces curated, photo-worthy tourist attractions near you.

Fotospot has over 8,500 unique attractions in all 50 U.S. states complete with photos and original written content. The app’s rated 4.8 stars with over 3.2K ratings in the Apple App Store.

Download: Apple App Store
Instagram: @fotospotapp

Solo Art Show

NFT IRL is a series of 16 original paintings and 8 NFTs created by artist, Erick Laubach. This collection features eight 36″ x 48″ and eight 18″ x 24″ acrylic paintings on wood panels. Each painting is made with 516 squares (including the sides), using 10-18 different acrylics. Designed to look like a colorful geometric abstract up close and morphs into a pop culture icon from a distance. Tip: View them through your phone’s camera to magically make them come to life.

Fotospot Swag

Fotospot uses gamification to encourage app activity. Earn points by getting followers, checking in, and adding photos (plus a few more “secret” ways). Use points to redeem products in the Fotospot Store.

Download: Apple App Store

Pizza Party

Pizza Party was a venture-funded digital goods and print-on-demand marketplace for iOS where you buy and collect rare, one-of-a-kind digital stickers (to use in iMessage, Snapchat, Instagram, and email) and real life products like backpacks, canvas prints, temporary tattoos, vinyl stickers, throw pillows, and tote bags.

The platform featured stickers from independent artists with 50,000 digital stickers collected, 40,000 downloads, and rated 4.7 stars on 800+ ratings in the Apple App Store.

Due to scaling challenges and limited funding, the app was shut down in late 2020.

Sticker Illustrations

In addition to founding the Pizza Party app, I was also one of the app’s best selling digital artists. Check out a few samples of my original vector-based character sets. To see more, tap on over to the Pizza Party Instagram Feed.

Heads & Tails

Heads & Tails by Petco was a pet selfie app that paid you $10 if your photo hit 100 likes and donated another $10 in your name to help animals in need. This app was very successful in attracting new, millennial customers to Petco.

In less than a year, Heads & Tails had over 100,000 downloads, was rated 4.7 stars (from 5,400+ ratings), averaged 1,200 DAUs, generated over 220,000 selfies, 13M+ selfie likes, 100,000 pet profiles, and donated over $350,000 to the Petco Foundation (a charity dedicated helping animals).

Due to shifting company priorities, Heads & Tails was shut down in early 2019.

Original Paintings

In addition to all my digital work, on occasion I’ve been known to paint with acrylic on wood panels. Over the past few years, I’ve sold 47 paintings in 12 different countries. You can see my portfolio of work on the Saatchi Art website.

Saatchi Art iOS App

Discover, buy, and sell art on the go with the award-winning Saatchi Art app for iPhone. It’s never been easier for artists to sell their work to a global audience and for art lovers to find, preview, and purchase original works. Get an international art gallery experience in an app!

Download: Apple App Store

Ghosty

Turn your city into a virtual Ghost Town by leaving behind photos (a.k.a. ghosts) that you can only see via the Ghosty app. Tapping on a ghost inside the Ghosty “photo radius” turns on your phone’s camera and lets you find ghosts floating nearby just like a scavenger hunt. Simply collect them or let them be. It’s ok to peek, we won’t tell anyone.

Due to scaling challenges and limited funding, Ghosty was shut down in early 2017.

The Pixel Awards

Pixel Awards are the leading international awards program honoring exceptional design & technology since 2006.

Our goal has always been to reward and elevate exceptional design & technology that help inspire and advance our industry. Our audience of makers and inventors – whether they are brands, designers, technologists, or business owners – make some of the best work in the industry.

Acquired by Your Majesty in February 2014.

Cuteness.com

Cuteness is a super pawesome pet community made exclusively for pets, by pets. It’s a place where your dogs, cats, fish, birds, reptiles (or anything else for that matter), can have their very own Facebook-style profile complete with photos, videos, status updates, friends, comments, and more!

Cuteness grew from a fun idea to 2.5MM+ monthly visits and over 320K Facebook fans.

My Role: Founder + Product + Design + Marketing

Acquired by Leaf Group in June 2015.

Facebook: @cutenessinc
Instagram: @cutenessinc

Crowdrise

Crowdrise is the world’s largest and fastest growing fundraising platform dedicated exclusively to charitable giving. Crowdrise is used by millions of individuals to raise money for personal causes and their favorite charities.

Acquired by GoFundMe in January 2017.