Meet Our Amazing Pathwire Mavericks!

Our Mavericks (not to be confused with the Dallas Mavericks) are the pillars of this group. Not only do they exhibit determination and knowledge (enough to teach us a thing or two now and then), but they also exhibit our five core values – Authenticity, Performance, Human, Ownership, and Evolution – in their personal and professional pursuits.

In the year since we began the Maverick Program, we’ve gotten to know several women and men who exemplify our values and what we’re all about. Now, we’re excited to share their stories with you. Take a look to learn more about some of our awesome Mailgun Mavericks!

Opeyemi Obeme

Hi Opeyemi! Can you tell us where you’re from and what you do?

Hi, I'm Opeyemi. I'm from Lagos, Nigeria, and I'm the Founder and CEO of Engage Messaging.

What is a project that you’re currently working on – or have worked on in the past – that you’re really proud of?

At the moment, Engage is something I’m really proud of – this is the first project that I am leading as a CEO. And it’s also interesting because messaging is something that I’ve always been passionate about. Businesses anywhere should be able to engage their customers in a way that can bring about growth and retention in a way that customers are loyal to the brand.

Tell us a little bit more about Engage – what was it like to create it? What inspired you?

Engage helps businesses send personalized messages to their customers. Businesses are able to create customer groups based on customer traits and actions, send campaigns to these groups and create automated message workflows. Businesses can connect their messaging infrastructure, like Mailgun, to power delivery. We also use this to provide detailed analytics and reporting for transactional emails. We launched open beta in February, 2021.

Are there any specific resources that have led you to where you are today?

It’s hard remembering specific resources, but what has helped has been reading a lot of tutorials, articles, and resources across a lot of developer communities. Mailgun’s blog and documentation has been immensely helpful in learning about email delivery, and it has helped with building Engage.

If you could create anything in the world, what would you create?

Customer messaging is something I am really passionate about. The long term goal of Engage is to build a solution that can help businesses with their complete customer messaging needs.

Finally, where can we find you to say hi?

You can find Engage on Twitter at @engage_so and me at @kehers!

Nic Raboy

Hi Nic! Can you tell us where you’re from and what you do? 

Hi! I’m from California, but not the Bay Area, though! I work at MongoDB in Developer Relations.

You built The Polyglot Developer. Tell us a little bit about why you created it and what inspired you.

I created it because I enjoy helping developers. It was previously called something else – my first and last name, basically. It’s been going on ever since. I produce content and use it to document my own thoughts, and then I look back on it. If I ever forget how to do something, I just look back on what I did previously. 

What is a project that you’re currently working on – or have worked on in the past – that you’re really proud of? 

Off the top of my head, I’ve been to plenty of cool events that I’ve spoken at and helped organize. For example, I organized a local developer meetup in Tracy – tracydevs.com. 

That’s awesome! What was your favorite thing about organizing Tracydevs? Why did you create it? 

I created it because I was tired of all the jobs being in the Bay Area. I’m just outside the Bay Area, and I wanted to prove that Tracy is just as much a tech hub as the Bay Area. There’s plenty of talented people and it’s a networking event so we don’t have to rely on Bay Area jobs.

What are some resources that have helped you get where you are today?

StackOverflow is number one. Youtube as well. There’s a mix-and-match of different blogs that pop up on a Google search [that I’ve used]. I also spend some time on the Dev Rel Collective Slack Channel.

If you could create anything in the world, what would you create?

I’m really big on games right now –- video games –- so I’d definitely spend time creating some kind of game. Something that is family friendly so my family could play!

Finally, where can we find you to say hi?

You can read my blog, The Polyglot Developer, our join the Tracy Developer Meetup here. You can also check out my Pokemon training website here!

Danielle and James Ivings

Hey y’all! Can you tell us a little about yourselves? 

Hello! I am Danielle, a digital nomad and indie maker. I am originally from the UK, but for the past 5 years I have been traveling full-time with my partner, best friend, and fellow developer James.

We founded our web development agency Squarecat (squarecat.io) together while on the road, and we occasionally do freelance work as full-stack JavaScript developers. However, our main focus is to build and grow our own products to attain sustainable recurring revenue so that we can continue to live and work remotely.

Are you currently working on any projects that you’re really excited about?

For the past two years we have been working on our flagship product, Leave Me Alone. It’s a service that lets you unsubscribe from unwanted mailing lists. It’s taken a lot of work, but this year we have started to achieve some of our long-term goals like releasing new features to help keep control of your inbox and reaching a sustainable level of growth.

That’s a big milestone! Tell us a bit more about Leave Me Alone. What was it like to create it? What inspired you?

Absolutely! James and I were both spending a lot of time sorting through our emails, so we went searching for a service that would help us find and unsubscribe from ones we didn’t want. We found a few which would help us for free, but a closer look revealed that they didn’t charge because they were selling all of their users' data for marketing. Faced with the dilemma of a messy inbox or all of our data being exploited, we decided to build our own solution!

The first version of Leave Me Alone was super simple – it showed you all of your subscription emails so you could decide which ones to unsubscribe from. Since then, the product has evolved to provide even better ways to manage your overflowing inbox. You can choose to keep, roll-up, or unsubscribe from an email but, most importantly, the core concept of the product remains the same. Leave Me Alone is fantastic at unsubscribing from unwanted emails and cleaning up your inbox.

What resources have helped you grow as developers and entrepreneurs?

The best thing that has worked for us for growing our audience is building in the open and being transparent about everything we're doing. We have a community following of people invested in us and our journey to build this product, and they want to see us succeed.

This has helped us to stay on track and remain accountable, and it’s provided an invaluable support network when things have been tough. We honestly attribute a large proportion of our success to the wonderful communities we're a part of who help to share our updates, promote our launches, and give us the motivation to keep going. The biggest ones are Makerlog and Women Make, but we also receive lots of support on Twitter, Indie Hackers, and recently in person from nomad coworking and meet-up groups in Bali and Chiang Mai!

If you could create anything in the world, what would you create?

We have worked with the nuances of email for the last two years, and we are discovering that in some ways it can feel like a legacy [technology], and a neglected technology. Email clients specifically have had barely any innovation for such a long time –- we think it can be done better! 

It is our dream to build an email client that focuses more on the recipient rather than the sender... something that makes it a joy to receive and read emails. 

Features like easy unsubscribing, combining emails into digests, blocking unwanted senders, and do-not-disturb modes are just a few of the things that’ll be available in our email client (someday).

Finally, where can we find you to say hi?

You can find us on Twitter at @LeaveMeAloneApp and, of course, through email at hello@leavemealone.app!

Mavericks making the future

As you can see, our Mavericks come from a wide variety of backgrounds, and they have used their skills to create many awesome projects. We’re so glad to have been part of their journeys, and we know that they will continue to do great things in email and beyond.

If you have a similar story and would like to apply to become a Pathwire Maverick, you can do so below – unfortunately, if you want to be a Dallas Maverick, you’ll have to look elsewhere. Happy sending and thanks to our many Mavericks!