The Journey
From a lonely Friday night to a live app in two cities. The real story, as it happens.
Live in Oakland & San Francisco
The app is on the App Store and Google Play. We're running recurring events in the Bay Area, watching real friendships form, and learning what actually works. Still building. Still figuring it out.
The Path So Far
Started This Blog (Third Time's the Charm)
This domain has been my companion through life's biggest moments. When I moved to California, during my divorce, and now. Each time I've turned to writing when life demanded reinvention. This time I'm building something.
Home alone on a Friday night, scrolling through contacts I hadn't spoken to in months. That was the night I stopped pretending I wasn't lonely.
My son created the first working prototype. That moment when it clicked: this isn't just an idea anymore.
Finally Told Someone
After a month of building in secret, I finally worked up the courage to tell someone what I was working on. The embarrassment was real, but so was their enthusiasm.
The Accidental MVP
Realised we'd actually built a minimum viable product without knowing it. Sometimes perfectionism blinds you to progress.
"That's cute." "Cool idea." "Just not really something I'd use." My friends' polite dismissals hit different.
Finding Our Why
My son sets a clearer goal: "If 30 people make friends through this project, we've succeeded." Sometimes the simplest metrics matter most.
The Foundation Ships
Event discovery, connection tracking, follow-up features. Real people could finally try the app without me frantically warning them about broken features.
The Universe Winks
Dinner with strangers. They start describing their dream app, and it's exactly what we're building. Their excitement when I told them about the project? You can't fake that.
The Solano Reality Check
Dreamed of launching at Summer on Solano. Had the perfect t-shirt idea: "Got friends?..." Then reality hit. Shirts take two weeks, Apple demands content moderation, notifications aren't built, Google wants three weeks of QA. Launch window slammed shut. Ordered the shirts anyway.
Heads Down
Months of building. Recommendation engine, personality matching, chat system, the dual WebSocket architecture nobody asked for but the app needed. The kind of work that doesn't make good stories but makes the product real.
App Store Wrestling
Submit, reject, fix, resubmit. Apple wanted content moderation. Google wanted three weeks of QA. Both wanted things we hadn't built yet. Built them.
Launched to the World
The app went live on the App Store and Google Play. After nine months of building, it was real. People we'd never met could download it. Terrifying and brilliant in equal measure.
Oakland Goes First
First curated events in Oakland. Real people showing up to real places because of something we built. Watching the chat messages come in after the first event was something else.
San Francisco Launches
Expanded across the bay. Two cities, real events, real connections forming. The thing we'd been imagining for a year was actually happening.
Growing in the Bay Area
Live in Oakland and San Francisco. Running recurring events, watching friendships form, learning what works and what doesn't. Still building. Still writing.
What I've Learned So Far
Things I didn't expect
- • The technology was the easy part. Understanding people wasn't.
- • Most people crave connection but need an excuse to reach out.
- • Gentle nudges beat aggressive notifications every time.
- • The follow-up gap is where friendships die.
- • You can work 16-hour days on pure enthusiasm. For months.
- • Telling people "I'm building a friendship app" never stops being awkward.
What I'm still figuring out
- • How to make recommendations feel natural, not algorithmic.
- • The sweet spot between curation and spontaneity.
- • Growing without losing the human touch.
- • What "success" actually looks like for something like this.
- • How to write about loneliness without being depressing.
Follow Along
The episodes are where the real story lives. The messy, honest, sometimes embarrassing account of trying to solve a problem that affects millions of people, starting with myself.
Read the Episodes