Why did a tech startup hire the Managing Editor of Nylon Magazine?

...and what does that mean for the future of AI?

People often ask why koodos—a company building personal context infrastructure & the creators of Shelf—also runs a culture publication that interviews hip-hop artists and new-age authors, writes album reviews, and even hosts Love Island watch parties.

The short answer: we’re not just building infrastructure. We’re building a movement.

I grew up writing online and later helped build out the creator ecosystem at YouTube. If there’s one thing that work taught me, it’s that technology only becomes meaningful when culture adopts it. And for culture to adopt it, you must be an active participant, not just an observer. Right now, we’re at a crossroads where AI will absolutely reshape daily life. The real question is whether it will chase engagement metrics and concentrate corporate power—or amplify human potential without diminishing human agency.

Infrastructure alone won’t decide that.

Make “what’s on your Shelf?” everyday language

We’re after that “you get it or you don’t” energy. Your Shelf isn’t just what you listened to, watched, or read; it’s a portrait of you—your year, your growth, the culture you affiliate with. And when something shows up on more than one person’s Shelf, it becomes culture.

If Shelf is going to feel like a companion and not inventory management, it has to move at the speed of culture: help you track not only what you do, but what it means to you and your communities. That meaning is the difference between data and context.

Millions already use Shelf, and our next goal is to make ‘what’s on your Shelf?’ as natural as ‘what’s your @?'

Storytelling is infrastructure

Brand isn’t an add-on; brand is infrastructure. Storytelling is how a technical system becomes legible, human, and worth caring about. Without a story, even the best app is invisible.

That’s why Shelf Mag isn’t a side project. It platforms the people whose Shelves we think are worth checking out, and it proves we understand taste and curation before we ever ask to steward yours. Over time, editorial won’t sit adjacent to Shelf—it will braid into the core experience, helping people make sense of their own shelves and one another’s.

And yes, we hold a clear line on data: privacy and user control can’t be the headline value prop—unless you only want five beardy guys from SF using your product. But they must be the outcome. They’re baked into how we build Shelf.

The hard problem is earning the right to hold people’s memory. The best way to preserve agency and fight technological fascism is by making the alternative so culturally compelling that people choose it because it serves them better and is more fun.

We could have built a generic data aggregation service. Plenty of companies are trying that approach. But users are getting smarter about their digital privacy and more selective about who they trust with their personal information.

The companies that win in the context era won’t be the ones with the best algorithms or the most data. They’ll be the ones users actually want to share their lives with – the ones that prove they understand the cultural and personal significance of what they’re being trusted to steward.

Company DNA (and why we hired Chelsea)

This philosophy shapes how we hire and how we work. Around our lunch table, debates jump from the Emmys to local LLMs without anyone blinking. We look for people who know technology only matters when it serves humans and culture at large.

That’s why we hired Chelsea Peng, previously the managing editor of Nylon. Chelsea has spent her career translating subculture into shared language, curating voices before they trend, and building editorial that functions as cultural currency. Her mandate here isn’t “make content.” It’s to make the narrative scaffold that turns Shelf from a utility into a cultural reference.

Watch this space.