Hey, I'm Parker (the guy behind the Nomo app). I've been happily married to my wife, Hollie, since 2008. We couldn't have kids of our own, so we adopted three... and then got pregnant... four times. So now we have 7!
We have a big family and love it.
I created Nomo back in 2012 when I started my recovery journey. I really wanted a way to track my progress, but there were only two apps in the Apple App Store that did that. They weren't great. Both were geared towards very specific types of recovery and the icons made it obvious. I wanted something more discreet and clean. It didn't exist, so I made it myself.
I had never made an iPhone app before, but I had experience coding desktop games. There was a lot of trial and error, but I eventually figured it out and submitted Days+ to the App Store. It was a sleek, minimal, brushed metal watch that simply had a number in the middle. That was your progress in days. You could swipe between multiple clocks and nowhere did the words "sobriety" or "addiction" show up. It was the app I wanted and I now had it on my phone.
About a year went by and I received an email from Apple regarding the stats for Days+. Never did I consider anyone else using my app. I literally made it so I could have it on my phone. Turns out, over 90 thousand other people wanted the same thing. Once I saw that number, I realized I was helping a lot of people and it was the best feeling in the world.
Over the next year, I worked on the app every waking moment that I wasn't with my wife, kids, or at work. It was a massive undertaking and tons of learning, but I knew what I was doing was important. I was doing everything on my own and figuring it out along the way. I received so much support from the recovery community that it became a community project in my mind. Literally everything you see in the app was a suggestion from someone who used it. There was no market research or corporate focus groups. Just real people telling me what they needed. I liked that.
I changed the name early on. Days+ was too generic and not memorable. So, I changed it to Nomo because it was unique, short, easy to spell, and stood for "No More". I continued to work on Nomo at night when my wife and kids were sleeping. Answering emails, fixing bugs, updating frameworks, fixing more bugs, answering more emails... I honestly love doing it. Occasionally, I'll get an email from someone who says Nomo played a significant role in their recovery. I never know how to respond because I'm filled with so much gratefulness that they used my app. It's an odd feeling, but I love it keeps me focused and driven.
I say this a lot because I think it's important. I'm not a company. I'm just a guy in recovery. I don't have a marketing team. I don't have software developers or graphic designers. It's just me. Not only that, it's just me and it's a passion project. It's not my full-time job. I do this because I legitimately want to help people. I'm sure I could charge for Nomo or offer some in-app purchase subscription thing and make bank, but that feels wrong. I believe Nomo is a great tool for recovery and I don't want cost to be something that prevents someone from using it. So it's free. It has to be.
Nomo does cost money to run. There are a lot of expenses that people don't realize. The service I use to send out emails alone costs hundreds of dollars a month. You'd be surprised. Server stuff, plugins, software, licensing, coffee, etc... it all adds up. I'm happy to pay for it out of pocket, but what I've learned is that the recovery community is extremely generous and supportive. I originally didn't have a way to donate, but it became a common email I'd get, especially when someone would realize I was an actual person. So, I made a way for people to give back.
I guess I wrote all of this to say, "I'm just a guy!"
(Just know I'm sincerely grateful for any amount)