Mike Veson

I made Iris as my universal assistant accessible anywhere. Iris Mobile lets me access Apollo on my phone for vault stuff and AI help. If I have an idea on the go or just want to check my grocery list, it's all there. It replaces keeping things in fifty places like Apple Notes, Google Drive, and Word.

Apollo is the AI that helps me know myself. I use an Obsidian vault synced across my devices for everything from classwork to writing my philosophy book, and Apollo searches for the relevant context when I bring something up. The advantage is I can bring up things I might not even be comfortable discussing with anyone in my life and get unbiased, understanding advice within the full context of my life.

I hate that on Beli I have to rank a steakhouse against my favorite pizza place. It's not about how good the restaurant is, it's about what my favorite foods are and how they rank against other items in their category. Rankd lets you rate individual restaurants and foods within their categories so we get more contextual rankings that actually help you find places.

I'm a massive FC Barcelona fan and a software guy, so I'm always complaining about how current stats are used to compare players. A dribble past the best defender in the league is different from one past the worst, and a dribble into five players versus open space is completely different. I've designed a full architecture for a more contextual ranking system so I can actually tell people why Lamine Yamal is better than Michael Olise.

I'm working on a movie trilogy (name pending) meant to show the human experience of pursuing happiness by living through every wrong approach until the right one emerges. It's a visual proof of my own philosophy to help people understand it themselves and draw their own conclusions from it.

A book exploring why self-knowledge is the foundation of flourishing, tracing how that insight connects across relationships, career, philosophy, religion, and daily life. Part autobiography, part philosophical investigation, part proof-by-lived-experience. Rooted in Aristotelian eudaimonia: living well and doing well, not just feeling good.

I started writing The Lantern in August 2025, inspired by How I Met Your Mother and all the unspoken rules that exist in our lives from the bro code to the front porch test. It's 39 rules and 79 theories covering everything from relationship patterns to ways to escape traps that lead to unhappiness, aimed at the young person experience roughly 16 to 35. I've printed over 30 copies that I give to friends across the world and update with their feedback.

I've kept a running list of important things since 5th grade. Any time I learn a lesson or hear something that sticks with me, I add it. It's been a great showing of how I've grown because I can see how my thinking has changed from 5th grade to now. I want my future kids to have it to help them on their journey too.