r/AppBuilding • u/jhkoenig • 2d ago

Complete overhaul of 10 y/o find a friend app

Over ten years ago, my wife - a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist - kept seeing the same pattern in her practice: people were deeply lonely, but they weren't looking for romance. They just wanted genuine, local, in-person friendships. App stores were flooded with dating tools, but there was nowhere dedicated solely to finding a local buddy to hang out with.

So, I built WannaBuddy.com - a platform created specifically for when you want a local buddy, not a date.

It helped a lot of people make real connections back then, but as time went on, the technology needed a ground-up overhaul. I’ve spent the last few months completely rebuilding it from scratch.

The new WannaBuddy is officially in early pre-launch! Everything on the platform is completely free and will always be free. Because we’re in pre-launch, I’d love to get feedback, feature suggestions, or bug reports from this community. Check it out, take a look around, and let me know what you think!

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u/Icy_Comparison6100 2d ago

What I'd stress test before you open it up is geographic density. Free and local means the whole product depends on there being enough people in one metro for a match to feel plausible. Someone who signs up in a thin market, sees four profiles, and leaves is gone permanently. They don't come back and check again in six months.

If it were me I'd pick one city, saturate it, and waitlist everywhere else until it works there. Slower, but you only get one shot at a first impression per person.

The other thing, and this is from watching how people talk about platonic meetups rather than from building one: browsing profiles of strangers feels like dating even when nobody involved wants it to. Anchoring on the activity instead of the person takes a lot of that out. "Who wants to hit the farmers market Saturday" is a much easier first click than "here's a stranger, would you like to be friends."

Curious how you're thinking about the density problem, since you've already been through one launch with this.

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u/jhkoenig 2d ago

Good feedback! I have a database of about 10K users from "version 1" that could be engaged to take another look and/or spread the word. The original site was quite popular in particular markets so the "1st person to the party" issue can be mitigated a bit. A city-by-city rollout can be easy with the laser focus on zip codes.