Gina Trapani

Entrepreneur · Developer · Writer

Hello!

I'm @ginatrapani. I've been building software and companies for over two decades. I also like to write about technology, and how it makes our lives better (and worse).

Currently I'm a Managing Partner at Postlight, a digital product studio in New York City, where we build web platforms, apps, and other software products for our clients. Need help building something? Get in touch.

Before Postlight, I founded sites and services like Lifehacker (acquired by Univision), Makerbase (acquired by Fog Creek), and ThinkUp. My side projects include Todo.txt, an open source collection of text-based task list apps, and Narrow the Gap, a web site about the gender pay gap.

My writing has been published in The Harvard Business Review, The New York Times, and Wired, among others. Profiles of my work have appeared in venues ranging from The Wall Street Journal to The New York Times. Once upon a time, Fast Company named me one of the Most Influential Women in Technology, and Wired magazine awarded me its prestigious Rave Award.

Some nice strangers also wrote a Wikipedia page about me. To get in touch, you can send me an email to my usual username at Gmail or tweet at me.

Thanks for stopping by.

Recently

February 2019

• Business Insider included me on their list of Most Powerful LGBTQ People in Tech alongside heavy hitters like Tim Cook and Arlan Hamilton.
• Joined Leo Laporte, Matt Cutts, and Dwight Silverman on an episode of This Week in Tech.
• Helped release Postlight Labs' first micro project of 2019, Fyre Ipsum, a homage to the Fyre Festival pitch deck.
• Helped the team at Postlight open-source the Mercury Web Parser. It's now free for use in your software projects.

January 2019

• Published an article in Track Changes called Personal Finance Apps Should Be Way Better because they should.

December 2018

• Had so much fun joining my old friends Jason Howell, Florence Ion, Ron Richards, and Chad Johnson on All About Android's 400th(!) episode.

November 2018

• Interviewed Dylan Field, founder and CEO of Figma, for an episode of Track Changes.

October 2018

• Recorded a short segment for a podcast episode with the rest of my partners celebrating Postlight's third birthday.
• Attended the PBS finale taping of The Great American Read with the Postlight team to celebrate America's best-loved books.

September 2018

• Fast Company recognized Postlight's re-imagination of The Players' Tribune and the National Audubon Society's flagship products in their Innovation by Design Awards. The Players' Tribune was a finalist in the Web Design category, and the Audubon Bird Guide app was a finalist in Apps & Games. See Postlight's awards.
• Migrated Postlight's Track Changes blog and podcast off Medium.com.

August 2018

• Published an article in Track Changes where I try to answer an age-old question many of our clients have: When It Comes to Software, Should I Build or Buy?.
• Inc. magazine mentions my piece on software estimation in How the 90/90 Rule Could Save Tesla.
• Interviewed Rick Webb, co-founder of The Barbarian Group and author of Agency, about digital marketing and starting an agency on the Track Changes podcast.

June 2018

• Named a Managing Partner at Postlight.

May 2018

• Spoke at F8, Facebook's annual developer conference, about partnering with The National Audubon Society to rebuild its Bird Guide App from the ground up with React Native. Panelists included representatives from Microsoft, TaskRabbit, and Condé Nast. Watch the video: How React Native Helps Companies Build Better Mobile Apps.
• Interviewed Christian Madsbjerg of ReD Associates on the Track Changes podcast about how tech can benefit from the humanities.

April 2018

• For Equal Pay Day 2018, relaunched Narrow the Gap with a new look and updated 2017 data in collaboration with my friends Matt Jacobs and Holly Graham.
• Gave a talk at Slack NYC's Developer Meetup about task estimation for developers. Published an ensuing Track Changes post, Estimation is a Core Competency.
• Interviewed Claire L. Evans about her new book, Broad Band: The Untold Story of the Women Who Made the Internet, on the Track Changes podcast.
• Helped the team at Postlight launch a web site for The Great American Read, a new TV show on PBS that celebrates America's top 100 best-loved books.
• Quoted in The Wall Street Journal story America Is Drowning in Lists, a tongue-in-cheek look at todo-list culture.

March 2018

• Helped build and launch a new platform for The Players' Tribune.
• Helped build and launch a newly redesigned site for the Digital Public Library of America.
• Co-hosted an event with The Knight Foundation at Postlight, where I moderated a panel discussing the role of platforms in encouraging unproductive dynamics between marginalized communities and journalists, with Anil Dash, Manoush Zomorodi, and Olivier Kamanda.
• Attended an International Women's Day Leadership brunch hosted by Google NYC.

February 2018

• Helped launch a new site for The Knight Foundation, featuring findings from their latest report, How Black Twitter and other social media communities interact with mainstream news. Fast Company quoted me in their story Two Charts Showing How The Mainstream Media Gets Minorities Wrong.
• Mashable quotes me in Kerry Flynn's story What's a hashtag? A digital device that both brings us together and divides us.

January 2018

• Helped build For Good, a newly-launched resource for finding socially-conscious companies.