This is a repost of a recent Pidro newsletter. It got some nice replies, and I thought it would be fun to share here.
Hej Pidro friends,
Marcel here. I wanted to tell you a quick story about how Pidro came to be.
It starts in 2016.
I was on a small island in Thailand called Ko Lanta. My then-girlfriend (now wife) Monika and I were spending a few months there, working remotely.
Ko Lanta had this incredible coworking space called KoHub. Picture hammocks, palm trees, and a bunch of people typing away on laptops with coconuts by their side. That’s where I met Tommy.
Tommy was a digital nomad from Finland, full of energy and ideas. One day, he asked me if I’d help him build a card game he and his friend Antti had been dreaming up.
The game was called Pidro, and it was huge back in their hometown, a small place called Närpes, Finland. They wanted to bring it online so people could play wherever they were.
I thought it was a cool idea—but I was swamped with work. I told him, “Sorry, I can’t help.”
Tommy and Antti didn’t give up. They found a service provider to build the game for them.
By early 2017, they launched Pidro, and it was an instant hit. People loved it. So much so, the servers couldn’t handle the load.
That’s when Tommy called me again.
“Marcel,” he said, “the game’s crashing. Can you help us out?”
Curious, I took a look at the server code. It was... a disaster.
But here’s the thing: I’d been learning a new programming language that was perfect for fixing this exact kind of mess.
So, I rolled up my sleeves, started optimizing the game, and before I knew it, I was part of the Pidro team.
And that’s how it all started.
Tomorrow, I’ll share the next part of the story—how Pidro grew into the game you know and love today.
Published