Nearby

Nearby is a location-based discovery platform built for students and young people. Instead of doom-scrolling Instagram or Eventbrite to find something to do this weekend, you open Nearby and get a feed of events, communities, and small businesses that are actually relevant to where you are and who you are.

I kept noticing that the most interesting things happening near me — student-run events, pop-ups, niche meetups — were buried in private group chats and screenshot threads. The platforms that should surface them either don't exist for students or treat them like a tourist demographic. Nearby is my attempt to fix that for my own city first, then everywhere else students are stuck doing the same thing.

Existing local-discovery tools are tuned for tourists or restaurant reviews. Students don't get a feed that reflects what's actually happening on their campus, in their neighborhood, or with the people they care about this week.

Designed around a personalized location feed: events, businesses, and communities ranked by proximity, interest, and social signal. Lean MVP shipped on Vercel — fast iteration, real users guiding what gets built next.

• ·Personalized location feed (proximity + interests + social signal)
• ·Lean MVP deployed on Vercel for fast iteration
• ·Lightweight onboarding tuned for student users
• ·Feedback loops with first cohort of Twin Cities testers

MVP live with an early student cohort in the Twin Cities. Actively iterating on feed quality + how events get sourced. Goal is to expand to additional campuses once retention holds.

• ·Personalized feed centered on proximity + interest
• ·Built solo from a clean MVP, iterating with real student feedback
• ·Targeting Twin Cities student communities first

The hardest part isn't the tech — it's the cold-start problem of supply. If you don't have events on the map, the feed feels dead. Spending more time on supply partnerships than UI polish has been the right call.