Meet Dayton Mills
Builder of the Week
Co-Founder & CEO of Branch
On the story behind Branch:
- Many people are struggling to connect and have meaningful spontaneous conversations with others as they transition to remote work
- Branch is striving to help companies produce serendipity in remote work via their virtual office app
- Employees can walk around the virtual office and their voice and video move with them
- Has been building Branch since March 2020
- Dayton has tons of remote experience through managing remote teams and playing video games
- Had the idea to marry the remote work experience with the online gaming experience
- Currently, there are 13 team members working on Branch who have built the first version of the product in just 4 months
On Dayton's entrepreneurial journey:
- Grew up in small-town Missouri and spent his time playing video games like Minecraft
- Many people don't know, but there is a whole micro-economy within the world of Minecraft
- Created a few Minecraft servers as a 14 or 15-year-old and brought in a few hundred dollars per month
- One of his first creations was Statscraft, which was kind of like Google Analytics for Minecraft servers
- Was helping track metrics for server owners
- Statscraft was eventually acquired by Buycraft, the Shopify of the Minecraft sphere
- Left Missouri and moved to California and joined a cryptocurrency project
- Eventually felt the founder's itch again and left to found Beekn, a social meetup app
- Was in a bit of a rocky place after Beekn and started doing contract work on the side and looking for work
- Eventually got in touch with his current co-founder at Branch, who he'd known for a long time, and started building Branch
On dealing with difficult times:
- "It comes to you"
- You can't force the idea, it will come to you
- Don't stress too much
- Sometimes you have to let the creativity come to you
- It can be good to put that itch away for a while and eventually you will feel the need to scratch the itch again
- It's okay to not have a project, but when the idea hits you, act on it immediately
How can people support Dayton?
- Follow him on Twitter: @DaytonMills
- Follow Branch on Twitter: @Branch_gg
- Check out Branch: Branch.gg