“Every day I want to celebrate Christmas rather than just build it up to one day.”

-Mike Kane

My kids have been itching to see lights, inflatables, and everything decorative about the Christmas season. I was Googling the best light displays in the neighborhood but I was coming up dry. Then I remembered what I used for the last couple of years, the ChristmasPrism app.

Back in 2020, Mike Kane (who happened to grow up just miles from me in Delaware County) was having the same issues but he actually did something about it. Kane, a 38-year-old husband and dad of 2 boys (2 and 4 years old) created the ChristmasPrism app to help his kids have a better Christmas. The app was an instant hit and it’s now used in every state in the US (and in Puerto Rico).

It sounds like a straightforward journey but this took place only after being diagnosed with a paralyzing nerve disorder at 21 years old leaving him unable to walk or even blink for a stretch of time. So I reached out to him to talk about his incredible story of recovery, why he locked himself in a room to self-teach coding, returning to the workforce as a 30-year-old intern, and now thriving as a dad with a new mindset.

An Interview With the ChristmasPrism App Creator

Brian: How did you come up with the idea for the ChristmasPrism app?

Mike: Back in 2020, when the world started going a little nuts with the pandemic, everyone started decorating super-early. So, in November, my son’s looking down [the street] to our neighbors’ lights, and using his own two-year-old words, pointing to the colors, and just loving it. So [my wife, son, and I] got in the car with him. We found four or five houses with lights and it was awesome and he was getting into it…and then nothing. We were getting lost on purpose to find more and then he started crying.

We get home and, to my wife—who is very involved in the Facebook groups and all that—I said, ”can you find out where all the lights are so we can take Mikey because that was so much fun?” There was nothing. As a software engineer, I said there has to be an app for that but everything was pretty dead….so I said, “challenge accepted.

At first, I said if I get 20 houses on here we’re going to have a great Christmas. Then it took off from there.

Tell me about the process of actually creating the app.

As an engineer, you always want to challenge yourself and think of cool things to make but I hadn’t built an app for myself in years at that point and I’m not a designer so I started having fun at that point and adding any animation I could add to it.

Having small children and a wife you can’t really dedicate a lot of time to it so I started waking up at 5am and worked on it for 2 hours a day and in about 2 weeks I had version one done. I put it out and that was basically it.

I first heard about the ChristmasPrism app on The Preston & Steve Show back in 2020 and I tried to download it but I couldn’t because I’m an android user. Fortunately, my wife had an iPhone so we were able to explore the neighborhood that way. You’ve since made the app available on Android as well, so what other upgrades have you made?

Year one, I’m an iOS developer so that was easy to quickly bang out. That year I was more focused on privacy since users were giving their addresses out. So I didn’t want to collect email addresses but then quickly realized that if users got a new phone they would lose access to their house—and I work for a VPN company that’s all about security—so in year two, we came up with an account system for that so you could log in with your email and enter your house.

This year, we brought a lot of upgrades from our Halloween version [FrightMaps] over with icons and things like that. What we’re releasing this weekend is our biggest feature yet which is an in-app contest. A lot of homeowners associations and townships do Christmas light contests so I wanted a way to bring it all into the app. So, no matter what your reason is, whether you want to have contests or go look at lights or post your lights, I wanted to give you a reason to come back.

As the app got media attention and the downloads increased, what were some of the biggest issues that you just didn't see coming?

Great question. In year one, we had 60,000 downloads! I was fixing bugs like every other week but the biggest hurdle I never expected was the cost. So, you know, I had it open worldwide and server costs, like uploading and downloading photos, everything costs money and the further away you are the more money it costs. At the end of the year, I was down a lot. I didn’t want to put ads in the app because I feel like it takes away from the experience.

Year two, we got sponsored by PECO so that really helped everything. Now I was able to expand a lot, learn a new language, flutter, and recode the entire app so it was available on Android.

This year, you lose steam every year. The first year it went viral with 60,000 downloads then last year we did about the same which was great but now I need to do a different kind of marketing. The first two years were technical and the third year is more marketing related.

What are your future plans for the app? Where do you see it going?

I eventually want to get to a point where you can post events so the map will still consist of houses but different icons will be different events. I really want to code it so, if you've ever seen the Santa Claus on the the fire engines, I want to have a special feature where if you’re on the app you would get alerted that Santa is in your zip code, Santa is in your area, and you can follow a little Santa sleigh through his drive because, as little kids, you wait outside freezing for 40 minutes at a time thinking when is he going to come down my street?

That is genius. Last year, my 9-month pregnant wife, 2-year-old son, and I were doing exactly that. We were in bitter cold, running to different streets and we barely found Santa in the firetruck. That feature would be great.

Yeah, imagine being able to just watch the app and then run out. I want to give people a reason to download it all year round, whatever that looks like. I want to partner with people who do Christmas lights for a living to showcase their work, real estate agents who decorate houses for open houses, anything that makes sense while keeping everything free.

I saw that there's an eerily similar app out there. What makes your app different from that or any others?

What’s funny is that in year one I had a copycat that literally copied my exact look, feel, all of it but what it’s lacking is that for one, you can see how many updates I have and that I’m constantly updating it.

Two, is that mine is literally all human reviews. Every post that comes into the app is vetted. I’m looking at every URL, I’m looking at every word, I’m looking at every image that comes into the app so you can be sure that when your son or daughter opens the app you’re not going to see anything inappropriate. There’s that human barrier and I think that’s what sets us apart from everybody.

I read that you're a self-taught coder. What got you motivated to do that?

Unfortunately, at the age of 21, I graduated from ITT Tech with a general IT degree and I was fixing CPS servers overnight, you know, I was 21. Then I woke up one day and I couldn't walk. It took about three days. My feet were heavy and then I was losing pace and then I would just fall over. I didn’t know what was wrong. So, I was diagnosed with a rare disorder called CIDP [chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyradiculoneuropathy]. It's a nerve disorder and actually put me in a wheelchair for a couple years. I started IV infusions every other day then every week then every month then it took the course of 10 years to get better. It's a pretty degenerative nerve disorder similar to MS, but there's actually medicines to stop the progression.

So from 21 to 30, I'm thinking I'm never working again. You know, I’m confined to my basement, kind of a loner, by myself. What are you gonna do with it? But then I started getting better. The medicine started really working and then my doctor at age. 30 said, “Look, we're gonna take you off this medicine for a year and if it works and you're good then go live your life.”

It never goes away because it’s a chronic condition but I was left at 30 years old, thinking what would be the most interesting thing in this world that I can do?

And I just picked the hardest thing that's struck me as like if I could do this, I could do anything. So, I started working out, I got my scuba diver’s license, I started traveling and exploring the world. I finally had a reason to go out.

And then, every night I locked my door and studied for a whole year straight. My sister can tell you, “Hey Mikey, you want to come up for dinner?” “No, I have to do this. This is what I have to do.” And then, you know, being a 30-year-old with no experience was really hard. I drove all the way to North Dakota for an interview, just for a job interview! Because I knew, once you get your foot in the door, your life is changed, right? And so, I've been on about 30 interviews, I was about to quit, thinking nobody's gonna hire me. I'm 30. I have no experience but my current employer gave me a shot as an intern 30-year-old injury and every six weeks I was re-evaluated and it's been seven years now and it all worked out.

I’m an OT and I get to work with patients with CIDP and similar diagnoses often so I can imagine how tough it is to accomplish all that you have. Do you have any residual symptoms of CIDP, like tingling in the hands, weakness, or anything else?

Absolutely. If you ever see a picture of me smiling, you can see one side of my face is different. Just things like that. I couldn’t blink my eyes or move my face for a year. I used to have a lot of tics and I would even twitch my eyes to make sure I could still move them.

But ever since [having] kids you take your mind off of yourself and that’s helped me a little bit. You know, I just get tired a little bit more easily. It's always in the back of your head, Is it gonna come back if I overexert myself? So when I get to that level I never try to push too far because you never know.


You’re a husband, you have two kids, a full-time job, and now this extra side gig of the app, is there anything that you do to manage all of that stress?

I eat cake [laughs]. No, It’s one of those things where like at first that you feel the pressure on your shoulders, at first getting dozens of emails an hour from people thanking me for doing this. Well, I don't want to let these people down so it's just part believing in yourself. I was kind of like look, let's just take everything in stride day by day and [thinking] what’s the next step in resolving that problem? That's what I'm focused on.


I try to be very light-hearted and I try not to take any of this too seriously or too personally. I think it’s everybody that uses it that makes it great, you know what I mean? I just kind of look at the world like that.

What plans do you and your family have for the holiday season?

I got a Jurassic Park advent calendar for the kids this year for the first time. We’re doing Elf on the Shelf [named Buddy] so every day is exciting. They find the elf then I make them say one thing they’re thankful for then they get their advent calendar. Then it’s Christmas movies every night. We’re going to make cupcakes tonight.

I want to just have them look back at every season and not just think dad worked. They love decorating, they love going on my app, they love looking at Christmas lights. Every day I want to celebrate Christmas rather than just build it up to one day.