What Marty Bell, founder of Poolsuite, has to say about building for fun

Marty Bell may be from the (stunning yet) cold Scottish Highlands, but that hasn’t stopped him from being the unofficial keeper of summer.

Bell is the founder of Poolsuite (formerly Poolside FM), the radio station, website, and brand that epitomizes summer nostalgia with retro 80s graphics and vibey relaxing music. As a recent Maker Grant recipient and off today's official launch of Vacation by Poolsuite (which pre-launched on Product Hunt in April), I spoke with Bell about his maker story.

We started by talking about how the dreary weather may have been part of why he started working on Poolsuite.

“Everyone thinks we’re from LA... I was probably subconsciously trying to getaway from the grey of Scotland when the idea arose,” he explained.

Poolsuite just became a finalist for the 2021 Apple Design Awards and made news for its partnership with Playdate. It’s also a favorite in the Product Hunt community too (we sometimes kick off our all-hands meetings here with the station while we wait for everyone to join the Zoom). Take a look at a few of the latest Poolsuite comments.

The vibes are unreal!!! 🤙🌴🍹Thank you for this!!!!! Jan Köster

It's a modern time capsule of sexy. Chad Fullerton

I am not leaving this app anytime soon. Aakarshna Anand

As a native Angeleno living in London, I can’t help but feel nostalgic myself when I’m on Poolsuite, but I love that you don’t have to live anywhere or be born at any one time to appreciate it. The aesthetics and jams are inclusive in a way that people all over the world can enjoy a bit of ultra summer.

Today, community is the foundation many makers build their products upon. Experts often tout the importance of having peers so you can support each other’s projects and find early adopters. As it happened, Bell didn’t have any following or community before he started Poolsuite.

Bell wanted to pair the music with something else that would make it even more powerful. Even though the music was new, it reminded him of 80s summer beach movies, the kind you instinctively picture coming on a VHS tape (if you’re old enough to have used one regularly).

The idea to create an 80s style website dawned on Bell.

The only problem was...

The friend was thrilled to help — it sounded like fun. Bell got to work pulling creative assets to “throw together” a website. What the movies were didn’t even matter. He hadn’t seen half of them. What was important was pairing the scenes with music so that he could re-create the feeling he got while listening.

That’s part of the brilliance of Poolsuite. The site isn’t so closely tied to one source of inspiration or reference to pop culture. It truly is a vibe.

Bell launched Poolside FM on Product Hunt in 2014, i.e. not long after Product Hunt was born. It's since undergone a re-name to Poolsuite (Bell and team explained the change here).

Since it was seven years ago, Bell had to go back through his profile history to try to remember what happened at the beginning. Though the comments on the post are few, they are as welcoming and energetic as the Poolsuite app that launched last week.

I'm in love. Totally rad! Big 80s fan so loving the vibe. Will be great on TV for summer time parties. :) - Corey Gwin

Bookmarked this immediately <3 - Lejla Bajgoric

Awesome find! Really love the 80s feel! - Adrian Grant

Beyond Product Hunt, Bell posted Poolsuite to the subreddit r/InternetIsBeautiful/, where it went “a bit viral” and the launch was covered by Vice and Manrepeller.

Bell curates and art directs Poolsuite and its products, including Vacation by Poolsuite, the company’s new sunscreen, and first physical product. He stressed though that he’s “definitely not a designer,” a job that’s handled by Neik Dekker, one of a team of 10 people currently working on the Poolsuite. Still, he works side-by-side with Neik, obsessing over the design research and “over-doing things” authentically.

We touched on how the old school operating system design that you see when you launch Poolsuite is core to the experience (and how Poparazzi’s onboarding flow recently exploded in a similar vein).

Most of what Poolsuite puts out is still free and Bell keeps it that way.

That’s not to say he’s always had a clear picture of what to do with the product and community he’s built. He reached out to his Slack community, Jacuzzi Club, a couple of years ago for help deciding what to do next with Poolsuite while he was too busy with another startup to focus his energy on it.

That’s how he met Lach Hall & Dakota Green, a match made in poolside heaven. Hall & Green had the concept and formulation for a new sunscreen but no brand. They were just about to raise money for the new company when Bell entered the chat looking for new opportunities, both of the fun and business nature. That’s how Vacation was born.

And they went all-in on “The World’s Best Smelling Sunscreen.” The product was crafted to transport you to the summer of 1986, Miami, Florida, and not just via the smell — which incorporates scents of coconut and banana — but through the whole experience, from the way the packaging opens to the receipt printed on old school 80s printer paper.

This is one of the key reasons Poolsuite has kept its cool factor and edge over the last seven years (and growing) — Bell’s insistency on keeping it a side project. He has never been focused on growth metrics and really is just having fun.

Bell tells aspiring makers that the way they position something they’re working on matters. He calls what he’s working on “experiments” and that leaves him open to working with friends. He doesn’t position himself as a CEO and would caution others on doing so quickly too. When you’re a CEO, you have to do everything right.

This attitude has allowed Bell to pull in talented developers to work on Poolsuite in return for a stress-free space to get creative, hone their skills, and have a good time.

Who else would take that class?