Emily Hyeamang
Founder, LilyPadLabs
Why I built YourPond
I built YourPond because I couldn't find a tool that showed me the connections between the people in my life.
I'd lived in four cities, worked at several companies, and accumulated hundreds of relationships that I was tracking in my head — who lives where, who introduced whom, who was at that wedding. I tried spreadsheets. I tried every personal CRM on the market. They all did the same thing: store names and remind you to follow up. None of them showed me how the people in my life were connected to each other.
So I built one. A really good one.
What I actually needed
I wanted to see where everyone lives — not just their latest city, but everywhere they've been. I wanted to know how people are connected to each other, not just to me. My college friend who married my coworker — that connection matters, and no tool tracked it.
But I also wanted to remember the moments. The birthday trip to Nashville. The dinner party where two people from completely different parts of my life met for the first time. The wedding weekend where I realized half the guest list knew each other through me. Those moments are what turn a list of contacts into a story — and I wanted somewhere to keep them.
I wanted a completeness score — something that made it satisfying to fill in the details, like a game that rewards you for caring about the people in your life.
So I built it
YourPond started as a contact book. But what people actually started building was something bigger — a living picture of their life. They were logging trips and dinner parties. They were tracking where things happened, not just where people live. They were mapping the connections between people from completely different parts of their world.
So YourPond became the place where your people, your places, and your moments all live together — and where you can see how they connect.
You add your people. You fill in where they live, where they work, how you met, their birthday. You connect them to each other — who's married, who's siblings, who introduced whom. And as you put more in, YourPond shows you more back: completeness scores, relationship patterns, a growing picture of your world.
There's no AI drafting messages. No algorithm deciding who you're losing touch with. You set your own reminders, on your own schedule. YourPond organizes. You connect.
The hardest part was always the same: getting your data in. Filling out forms for 150 people is a non-starter. And importing your entire phone book or LinkedIn just dumps in thousands of contacts you'll never look at. So we built a feature called Describe Your People — you type about the people in your life the way you'd tell a friend about them, and YourPond extracts the details. Names, locations, jobs, relationships — all from a paragraph. You review everything before it's saved. It turns what used to take hours into minutes.
The part that matters most to me
One thing I've always believed: the best thing you can do for the people in your life is introduce them to each other. That's what builds community. Not just knowing people — but helping your people know each other.
I've spent years making introductions. A coworker who'd get along with a college friend. A neighbor who's in the same industry as someone I met at a conference. Those moments where two people from completely different parts of your life meet and realize they have everything in common — that's the magic.
But no tool tracked any of it. I couldn't see which connections in my life existed because of me. YourPond tracks introductions. You can see who you've connected, how those relationships grew, and how the people in your life went from strangers to friends — because you made the effort to bring them together. It's one of my favorite things about the product.
The data principle
YourPond holds the most personal information in your life — where your friends live, who's related to whom, who introduced you to your partner. That data should never be sold, shared, or used for anything other than showing it back to you.
So that's exactly how we built it. No ads. No data sales. No AI training on your relationship data. Your data helps you see your world — and that's all it does.
Intentional over comprehensive
Most tools in this space start by importing everything — your LinkedIn, your Google Contacts, your phone book. You end up with 2,000 names and no idea where to start.
YourPond takes the opposite approach. You start with the people who matter most. Your family. Your closest friends. The coworker who changed your career. You describe them in your own words, with the context that actually matters to you. Then tomorrow you add a few more.
Your contact book grows the way your relationships do — gradually, intentionally, one person at a time. That's by design.
Who this is for
YourPond isn't for everyone. It's for the kind of person who already does this work in their head — who remembers where friends moved, who knows who introduced whom, who keeps mental notes about the people in their life.
If that's you, YourPond just gives it all a home.
YourPond is built by LilyPadLabs
Indie. Bootstrapped. Chicago-based.
Where your life comes together.
Free to start. No credit card required.