Hello!
I’m Kait
Here is a collection of some of the places you can
find me on the web.
Who I Am
Senior Full-Stack Engineer
I’ve been a software engineer for 18 years. Three of them were at Adobe. Then in 2013 I started Simply Digital OÃœ, the app company I still run today. We’re at 50,000+ users now.
I love working on products end to end, from pixel-perfect design all the way through engineering. I particularly enjoy UX and database design.
I’m self-employed right now, happily busy with the projects on this page. But I’m open to the right opportunity with a great team.
Uri has a lot going on, but many events aren’t well-advertised. You have to know to look on each organizer’s site. I wanted one master view. It started from my own frustration as a mother in Uri, but I’m hoping it also helps event organizers to pick dates that don’t overlap with each other.
Recent Project
urikalender.ch
urikalender.ch came out of Hackdays Uri. I proposed the project, recruited a team, and we shipped a working site in one weekend. I’ve kept building on it since, adding new source calendars and improving the code.
I chose this project specifically because the work divided cleanly into web scraping, data processing, and front-end. That way each teammate could own a chunk and work in parallel during the hackathon.
The most interesting challenges were around de-duplication. Many of our sources re-publish each other’s events. Events at the library, for example, also appear on the Gemeinde Altdorf site. We had to detect when an event had actually been updated, without merging three showings of the same movie in one day into one event.
My company
Simply Digital
I made an android app…
I’ve always been very interested in organization and time management. So I built the planner of my dreams! I’ve been running this business since 2015.
Press
Here is some positive attention that Simply.Digital has Received
YC Startup School
Part of the first Y Combinator Startup School class. A MOOC with a dedicated real advisor
Me & Simply.Digital
On YouTube
Having started making videos for fun about a year earlier, I decided to try to make them for Simply Digital.
This channel has a personal brand (though I use the more approachable “Kait” version of my name). The project is both a creative outlet for me and hopefully brings in new users to Simply Digital.
I mostly make academic-style videos on different productivity concepts. As well as experiment with other more personal vlog-like formats.
Hustle Castle
Videogame Guides
During the pandemic, I got really into a game called Hustle Castle (77 MM installs).
I wrote up some guides explaining game mechanics. This site now receives 2k unique users and 5k views monthly.
Then I decided to try making videos. These were really popular and I’m now arguably the biggest english-speaking youtuber in this community.
Looking for a way to break even on what I spend on this hobby, I opened a merch store. I worked with an artist to make original art inspired by the game. Then I opened a print-on-demand drop shipping store. This doesn’t make much money, so I will eventually take it down, but was a fun experiment.
Background
Northeastern University
I grew up in New Jersey, about an hour from both NYC and Philadelphia. I moved to Boston to attend university, then to San Francisco to work at Adobe. In 2010 I left to travel and ended up in Rome for 13 years. In 2023 I moved to Altdorf. I am a US-Italian dual citizen and Swiss resident.
For university, I did a double major in Computer Science and Information Science at Northeastern University. Northeastern runs a 5-year program: four years of theory-heavy coursework plus three 6-month paid internships for the practical side.
While I was there I was President of the ACM Chapter, stayed on the Dean’s List and in the Honors Program, and won the Excellence in Teaching Award.
On languages: English is my first language. I speak Italian at a C1 level. I’m working on German now (currently B1, finishing the course at the end of the 2025-2026 school year).
Traveling
Travel Blog
Back in 2010, I quit my software engineer job at Adobe and packed up my San Francisco apartment to try full-time travel. I recorded my adventures for posterity here:
I also got really into photography.
Still do a lot of traveling and photography. Also video, now. And more child photography mixed with travel photography.
I do a fair amount of writing for various things. For example, I was a “Top Writer” on Quora for 2016. They even sent me a nice messenger bag 🙂
Mediocre Moms
Podcast
My childhood best friend and I have a monthly podcast.
The idea is listeners can join in on our call to have some girlfriend time, which a lot of us struggle to fit into our schedules.
This is a chat between two mom friends, think commissary more than parenting advice. Though we’re not bad moms, we actually try really hard. But the result is still mediocre 🙂
Aurora & Lavinia
Parenting
In 2015 our daughter Aurora was born. She’s so great, we did it again. In 2018 we welcomed Lavinia.
