Retro
Retro is a social app focused on genuine connection with friends and family. It’s a weekly photo journal that helps you share life moments with the people who matter – without ads, influencers, or attention hijacking. It’s built for people who want to feel closer, not just scroll.
Get to know Retro
Who’s behind Retro?
I’m Nathan Sharp, co-founder of Retro.
I was originally drawn to tech, and especially software startups, for two reasons. Back in high school and college, I was really into government, policy, even architecture. I loved the idea of building systems that people live inside – structures that are opinionated, that guide people toward their better selves. But when I did an internship at Google in 2007, I saw how Larry and Sergey were having a much bigger global impact than any of the policymakers I looked up to. And with way more freedom. That’s when I realized I didn’t just want to critique how things work – I wanted to build something better.
Software felt like the best path for that. The feedback loop is fast, the impact is huge, and you can fix things quickly if they’re off. You ship something, and the next day the world is using it. I remember we released a sticker pack at Instagram and literally saw the Prime Minister of Israel use it on his story the next day. That kind of reach still blows my mind.
My journey really started in 2016, when I joined Instagram as a product manager on the creation team. That team was responsible for giving people the tools to express themselves, especially normal people who weren’t creators.
At the time, most users were only sharing their highlights. People waited until the event ended to pick one of 60 photos, the single best one, to post. The bar to share kept getting higher. We started digging into why and found a few things: the chronological feed, the public like system, and the permanence of posts on your profile. All of it made people hesitate.
That’s when we started pushing on the stories format. It was inspired by what Snapchat had pioneered – multiple photos in a single unit, private feedback, and posts that disappeared after 24 hours. There was this amazing iOS engineer, Ryan, who took a risk on an internal project that probably wasn’t going to ship. We used to meet at a bar in San Francisco called Lone Palm and talk about starting something together, choosing our own problems, our people, and how we build.
After we shipped Instagram Stories, we both went our own ways inside Facebook, but we always came back to the idea of building a studio where people could do the best work of their careers. That’s how Lone Palm Labs started – just a few of us. And Retro was the first product we wanted to build.
What’s Retro and what’s so cool about it?
We chose Retro as the first product we wanted to work on because, number one, it was something we really wanted for our own family and friends. And number two, the products we used to rely on to see updates from our friends were becoming more and more dedicated to creators, to people trying to build an audience and distribution.
And while some people decry where social media is going – that it’s become a distraction machine, and we get that. But we also remember when it was a really positive thing. When it helped real friends stay close. So we wanted to start a project that brings back some of the redeeming qualities of social media – a camera in your back pocket that’s networked, so you can stay close to the 20 to 200 people you really want to keep in touch with, but don’t text on a daily basis.
Retro is a weekly photo journal. You just pick a few moments from your week, the ones you want to remember, and share them. And as a byproduct, your friends stay updated too.
We’re building Retro in a way that doesn’t hijack your time or attention. Most social products are built for advertisers, and that means they’re designed to keep you scrolling. With Retro, you see your friends, maybe post a moment or two, and then you leave the app and go live your life. That’s how it should be.
We’ve described it a few ways – sometimes “feel-good social,” because it’s an app you feel just as good closing as opening. Or “ad-free social,” because it’s a break from all the influencer content that feels like ads. But at its core, it’s just a place where you can actually see your friends again.
Almost half of our daily active users post on the same day, which is kind of unheard of in social media. It tells us people feel comfortable sharing here. They’re not posting for likes or for clout.
They’re just sharing, honestly, for their friends. There are also shared albums for group events, recaps to post on Instagram, and even the ability to mail a real postcard anywhere in the world for $2. We just love the idea of making it easy to get your memories off your phone, and back into real life.
Tool Stack of Retro
What’s under Retro’s hood? Which technologies were used and why did you chose them?
We’re on iOS and Android, and we built Retro fully natively on both platforms. That was a deliberate choice from day one. Most early-stage startups usually pick one platform first – it’s cheaper and less risky, but Retro is a networks product. It’s about staying close to people, and we wanted Android users to have the same great experience as iOS users. From the earliest days, we’ve had an amazing Android app – all credit to Daniel Grech, our Android lead. He’s an incredible developer and made something we’re really proud of.
Our backend is built on Google’s Firebase.
Internally, our workflow is super simple. We run daily standups using a checklist in Notion, just a bullet list of what you did and what you’re doing next.
For real-time communication, we actually use Signal. We just wanted a simple, clean chat app, and Signal felt elegant. New folks join and ask, “Wait, the whole company runs on Signal?” Yeah, and it works.
Most of our product conversations happen inside Figma. We’re big fans. Sometimes we’ll do a demo in Origami, but honestly, most of the time it’s just Figma and then straight to building.
We have this internal process we call “build and live with it.” Once we feel good about something in Figma, we build it into the TestFlight version of the app and live with it for a week or two. It takes a bit longer to get into code, but it gives us a way more honest read on whether a feature actually works or not.
Do you use any other tools to run the business?
We keep things pretty simple when it comes to tools.
Most of our communication with users happens through Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, and email. We do have a Retro account inside the app, but since it’s a friends-first network, it’s not universally friended. Sometimes we’ll chat with users in the app itself, but for the most part, it’s just those core channels.
We’re not over-engineering anything with some giant tool stack. Just talking to users directly, in the places they already are. That’s always the best way.
What’s your personal stack? Which apps do you and your team love?
Notion is a big one for me. I use it for pretty much all my coordination and collaboration, both inside and outside the company. It’s just super versatile.
I’ve also gotten really into all the different AI assistants lately. I used to love the simplicity of just working on my laptop – no monitor, just the laptop screen. But now I keep half my screen as a browser with like five different tabs open across ChatGPT, Claude, Grok, Gemini, and Perplexity. I usually ask the same question to all of them just to get a sense of their different strengths. They’re insanely helpful, especially for the small, dumb questions you don’t want to bother another human with.
ChatGPT is still my daily driver – the general-purpose go-to. Claude feels more like a personal friend, I turn to it for anything more personal or reflective. Grok is great for understanding what’s happening on X – it’s super useful for keeping up with business advice, trends, what’s working for different companies. Gemini and Perplexity get thrown into the mix depending on what I’m working on.
A lot of what I use them for is marketing-related, things like understanding how users are thinking about a problem, synthesizing research, drafting a newsletter or a post. I’ve also been using Claude to help with email chains. Sometimes I’ll just save a long thread as a PDF, upload it, and ask Claude to summarize the conversation, draft responses, or even generate custom contract language based on everything that’s been discussed. It saves me a ton of time.
For quick notes, I still use Apple Notes, especially when I’m out on a run or just need to jot something down fast. And for email, I’ve tried a bunch of different tools but keep coming back to classic Gmail. Simple just works.
Anything else you’d like to share?
If you’ve got people you care about but don’t text every day, Retro is for you. It’s the easiest way to stay close – just pick a few moments from your week, and your friends do the same.
You can also create shared albums, post recaps to Instagram, or even send real postcards for $2. We’d love for you to try it and tell us what you think.
Now, discover Retro for yourself
Big thanks to Nathan for sharing the story behind Reto and what makes it such a beautifully crafted, refreshing social app. Try it out, invite your friends, and start capturing your favorite moments together.