How siasola started: from tinnitus to an app company

Most companies start with a pitch deck or a market opportunity. siasola started with a problem that would not go away. Literally.

Our founder Justin has had tinnitus since he was 18. That is not a dramatic origin story he polishes for interviews. It is just a fact about his life, the kind that reshapes your daily routine in ways other people do not think about. The persistent sound is always there. And when you live with it long enough, you start looking for tools to manage it.

He looked. For years, he looked.

The search for something that actually worked

If you have tinnitus and you search for sound masking apps, you will find options. There is no shortage of apps that offer white noise, nature sounds, or ambient loops. Justin tried them. He tried a lot of them.

The problem was not that they did not exist. The problem was that they all felt the same. Fixed presets. A handful of sounds you could not modify. No way to adjust pitch. No way to layer multiple sounds together with any real precision. You got what someone else decided you should get, and that was it.

For something as personal as tinnitus, where the sound you hear is specific to you and what masks it effectively is different from person to person, a one-size-fits-all approach felt like a fundamental mismatch.

Justin is a developer. So after enough frustration with the tools available, he did what developers do: he started building his own.

Building the tool he wished existed

What would become Siasola Tinnitus Masking Sounds started as a personal project. Justin built it for himself, to solve his own problem, with no particular plan to release it.

The goal was simple: build a sound masking tool with the level of control that the existing apps did not offer. That meant a few things.

First, more sounds. Not ten. Not twenty. The app includes over 95 sounds, and that number keeps growing. But more importantly, it meant control over those sounds. A 5-layer mixer where each layer has independent volume and pitch controls. A pitch exploration tool so you can find exactly the frequency range that works for your ears. Sleep fade mode for winding down at night. DSP effects for fine-tuning the output.

None of this was designed by committee or focus-grouped. It was designed by someone who needed it, building exactly what he wanted to use.

That distinction matters more than it might seem. When you build something for yourself, you make different decisions. You do not cut corners on the features you actually need. You do not add features just because they look good in a screenshot. You do not optimize for first impressions at the expense of daily use. You optimize for the thing you are going to open every single day.

A note on what this app is not

This is important, and Justin is clear about it: siasola Tinnitus Masking Sounds is a sound customization tool. It is not a medical device. It does not make promises about outcomes. It does not position itself as something it is not.

Justin built the app he wished existed. He is making it available to others who want the same level of control over their sound environment. That is the whole story. No clinical claims, no before-and-after framing, no exaggerated marketing language.

The app does what it says it does: it gives you precise, layered control over sound masking. What you do with that control is up to you.

From personal project to company

At some point, the project crossed a line from "thing I am building for myself" to "thing other people might want." You mention it to a friend. They ask when they can use it. Someone else asks. You realize that the problem you are solving for yourself is a problem other people have too.

That is when siasola, the company, started to take shape. Justin is now perfecting the apps before sharing them publicly. The philosophy behind them was set early, shaped by his own frustration as a user of other apps:

No data selling. siasola does not collect personal data to sell. The business model is the product, not the user.

No dark patterns. No manipulative UI tricks to push you toward purchases you do not want. No guilt-tripping when you try to cancel. No hiding the unsubscribe button.

Transparent pricing. You can see what you get at every tier. The free version is genuinely useful, not a crippled demo designed to frustrate you into paying.

Meaningful free tiers. This one is worth emphasizing. A lot of apps offer a "free" version that is so limited it barely functions. Justin felt strongly that the free tier should be a real, usable tool. If someone finds it does everything they need, that is fine. The paid tiers exist for people who want more.

These are not values that were workshopped after the fact. They are decisions that were made early, because Justin knew what it felt like to be on the other side of those dark patterns.

Growing beyond one app

Here is where the story takes a turn that Justin probably did not plan for when he started building a sound masking tool in his spare time.

Once siasola existed as a company, once the infrastructure was there (the development processes, the design philosophy), it became clear that the same approach could apply to other problems.

The second app in development is Cycling Beats. Different domain, same philosophy. Cyclists who want music that matches their cadence have limited options. Most workout playlists are generic. Cycling Beats uses AI to generate BPM-matched music for cycling, music that actually follows your ride instead of ignoring it.

It might seem like a strange leap from tinnitus sound masking to cycling music. But the thread connecting them is the same: find a problem where existing tools are too generic, then build something with real precision and control.

Then came AI services. siasola builds custom AI agents for businesses, companies that need AI solutions tailored to their specific workflows, not off-the-shelf chatbots. Again, the same pattern: generic solutions leave gaps, and siasola fills them with something purpose-built.

The team

siasola is not a one-person operation. The team includes Manon Dumas and Joshua Rosenbaum, each bringing their own expertise to a company that has grown well beyond that first personal project.

But the culture still reflects its origins. When your company starts because someone built what they personally needed, that mindset tends to stick around. Every product decision still comes back to a version of the same question: would we actually want to use this?

If the answer is no, it does not ship.

What we believe (and what we do not)

If you spend any time on our about page, you will notice that siasola does not talk like most tech companies. There is no mission statement about "changing the world." There is no breathless copy about "disrupting" anything.

The company believes in a few things:

Privacy is not a feature. It is a baseline. Every siasola product is built with privacy as a default, not as a premium add-on.

Technology should respect the people using it. That means no manipulative design, no exploitative data practices, no artificial scarcity to drive upgrades.

Specificity beats generality. The best tools are built for specific problems with specific levels of control. Generic solutions are convenient for the company building them, not for the person using them.

Free should mean free. If a product has a free tier, that tier should do something genuinely useful. Otherwise, it is just a demo with extra steps.

These are not aspirational values plastered on a wall somewhere. They are operational decisions that affect what gets built and how.

What comes next

siasola is still a young company, and the roadmap is still taking shape. The apps are being perfected before their public release. What we can say is that the same approach (find real problems, build precise tools, respect the people who use them) is not going anywhere.

The tinnitus app is being refined with new sounds and features. Cycling Beats is pushing what AI-generated music can do. The AI services work is bringing siasola's approach to businesses that need thoughtful, custom-built solutions.

We do not make big promises about the future. That is not really our style. What we will say is that every product siasola builds starts from the same place: someone on the team genuinely wanting the thing to exist.

That is how it started. That is how it continues.

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Want to learn more about where siasola is headed? Visit our about page or explore what we are building: Tinnitus Masking Sounds and Cycling Beats. If your business needs custom AI solutions, check out our AI services.