CEO @ IFTTT. Every thing (and everyone) works better together.
San Francisco, CA
Joined August 2007
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In 2010, people understood "if this, then that" right away. Setting it up was the hard part.
Now nearly half the Applets built in IFTTT's chat come from a single typed message. A typical one goes live in about 3 minutes.
Say the sentence. It becomes the Applet.
Today IFTTT becomes IFTTT.ai.
Our first tagline in 2010 was "put the internet to work for you." Now we're putting AI to work for you, and taking down our paywalls on every plan, including Free.
I wrote about what changed and why.
ifttt.com/explore/put-ai-to-…
I have watched IFTTT evolve through a few major technology waves up close. The web, the app store, smart homes, voice assistants. Now AI.
Each wave changed how people talk to software. None changed what they want from it.
If this, then that. Still a powerful sentence and idea.
Not every automation step needs a model.
An email from a client's address is an exact event. A trigger catches it every time, at no cost.
Save AI for what needs judgment, like how to word the reply.
Intelligence is the costly part. Spend it where it counts.
What would you automate, in one sentence?
If this, then that.
Think big this time. What feels impossible or futuristic today but may be possible soon?
Maybe the only Land Rover i would drive :)
ALT A cream vintage Land Rover with tan leather seats parked in front of a red brick building
An AI agent can message your partner when you leave work. But only if you tell it you left.
Automation is most useful when you never have to remember to ask.
MCP (Model Context Protocol) is starting to get events. I'm glad, because the "if this" is the hard part.
Ten years ago this month I wrote that AI needs access, not a better interface. Data to learn from. Abilities to act.
I got the access part right. I underrated the interface. Chat is what made AI usable for everyone.
Turns out you need both.
medium.com/read-think/ai-is-…
The first IFTTT blog post went up on December 14, 2010. It explained that ifttt is short for "if this then that."
One sentence anyone could use to make their tools work together.
Sixteen years later, it is still the simplest way I know to describe automation.
Small @IFTTT thing I like: iOS Shortcuts can now send actual text into your Applet, not just a trigger.
Dictate a video idea. Send a caption to your drafts. Log a client note on the go.
ifttt.com/ios_shortcuts/trig…
Nobody trusts AI because it is smart. They trust it because it did a small job right ten times in a row.
Then they hand it a bigger one.
What was the first thing you let AI do without checking?
Working remotely in my garage sometimes feels like this. lindentibbetswashere.com/pos…
Still love this David Hockney print. lindentibbetswashere.com/pos…
We've been shipping fast — Ghost, Gamma, HeyGen, Linear, HubSpot, and dozens more are now on IFTTT.
None of it is about any single app. It's about the ones you already use finally working together, automatically, in the background.
ifttt.com/explore
A year ago, building a new service integration for @IFTTT took our team 1–2 weeks. With AI, it's now 2–3 hours.
That's the AI story I find most convincing — not agents replacing people, but small teams shipping like big ones.
The automations I love most are the ones I've forgotten I set up. New mention → Slack alert. Post scheduled in buffer → goes live a couple days later. Files change on my laptop → gets backed up later that evening. No app to open, no agent to prompt. It just runs, the same way every time. Quiet reliability is the whole point.