About
Mark Schmulen
Mark “I Am Not A Programmer But Did You Try Restarting Your Computer” Schmulen graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a BA in International Relations and BA in BS. After college, Mark served as an investment banking analyst for JPMorgan Chase in NYC. Mark plays the piano, is afraid of clowns, and is not a very good piano player.
David Lyman
David “Frank the Tank” Lyman graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a BSE in Computer and Telecommunications Engineering (a title that barely fit on his diploma). Prior to co-founding NutshellMail, David worked as an information technology consultant for Accenture. David likes going to Home Depot and Bed, Bath, & Beyond on the weekends; we don’t know how he finds the time.
This Is Our Story
Our story is an account of two best friends who have set out to solve real problems for real people. Specifically we are committed to improving how we all communicate online and how we manage and access our many communication channels. After 12 years of friendship, we decided to create NutshellMail.com, a free web-based service that enables you to productively access and manage all your email and social networking accounts through any inbox you already use. We created NutshellMail, frankly, because it was a tool we both needed. However, we quickly realized that NutshellMail has the potential to help others improve their productivity, more easily manage all their accounts, and even access personal messages in the workplace in a manner that does not violate or compromise most corporate IT policies.
This blog not only chronicles the experiences and challenges we have faced and continue to face in trying to launch an internet startup, but it also addresses the very issues our solution was designed to resolve, namely:
- How can we better manage all our messaging accounts?
- How can we access personal messages at work without violating company policy?
- How can we keep our children safe online?
- How can improve our personal productivity?
This blog will provide useful advice, statistics, news, as well as our personal thoughts on both business and the Web. Hopefully with your feedback, it will facilitate discussions and educate readers (as well as ourselves) about the Web, online communications, social media, and how these forces continue to change our lives. We are particularly interested in how the Web affects the way we connect, communicate and collaborate, both, in our personal lives and in the workplace.
We believe the Web is a big, continuous conversation. We hope that you find our posts to be informative and entertaining. We pledge to you, our readers, to always be honest, to speak straight, and to listen to your feedback. We encourage you to post comments, introduce new subjects and invite your friends to join the conversation.
Sincerely,
Mark and David
The Nuts at NutshellMail.com
Our History
David and I first meet in the 8th grade at The Kinkaid School in Houston, TX. Through the years, we have become increasingly close as friends. After graduating high school, we both attended the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, PA. While David spent most of his days locked up in a room studying electrical engineering and computer sciences, I spent a lot of time hanging out with friends. Somehow, I managed to pick up a degree in International Relations. During college, we joined the same fraternity, lived in the same house, and endured countless comments about how we were attached at the hip (especially from our girlfriends). After graduating, we experienced a brief seperation. David moved home to Houston to work as an Information Technology Consultant with Accenture, and I moved to NYC to work as an investment banking analyst with JPMorgan Chase. Three years and hundreds of dollars in long-distance calling expenses later, I moved back to Houston to go “all in” with David to create NutshellMail.com.
Our story is one of two best friends who have always known that we would start a business together. NutshellMail.com is our first real attempt.
An interesting aside, David and I became friends long before we discovered that our dads grew up on the same street in Baton Rouge, LA. The two were good friends and played pee-wee football together, only to lose touch after high school until they ran into eachother at our 8th grade football game. David and I are thrilled to have helped rekindle our dads’ friendship. Today, our parents are great friends and have been more supportive of our crazy endeavor than we could have imagined.
