To everyone shitting on the SF tech bros for "inventing friendship from first principals": have you actually tried making new friends as an adult?
Real friends. Not acquaintances. Not hookups. Not “we should grab coffee sometime.”
I’ve built community online and offline for years. Big ones. Small ones. Weekly ones.
If each person who *regularly* comes to my events *in my town* invited me to just ONE event per year, I'd have something to do 3 days a week.
But they don't.
Because almost no one wants to consistently host, plan, invite, and follow through. Everyone wants to keep their options open. Everyone wants to keep it simple.
And yet. There are some people who truly want to make new friends where they live (not just in SF, LA & NYC).
The advice to "just meet people at the bar" or "talk to people at the gym" is lazy.
Being in public is not the same as being open to connection.
Maybe the guy sitting at the bar just got laid off. The cute lady at the gym has her headphones blasting.
Churches & golf clubs do this well (owning real estate helps).
But not everyone is religious. And not everyone plays golf. But a lot of people are hungry for belonging.
That’s why these products are working and the market opportunity is so big.
The next era of community apps won’t be optimized for more screen time.
They’ll be optimized for getting people off their phones and back into real life.
That’s why these products are working. And I love to see it.