Show HN: Kindred – Find an accountability buddy near you for your hobbies

2 points by hansonkin 1y ago ↗ HN

It's the new year and many of us have resolutions to start new hobbies or focus more on existing ones. Having someone you can meet with to do or talk about a shared activity helps us stay motivated and more importantly, makes it more fun. Finding an accountability buddy can be tricky because a good match involves several factors. Ideally, you want someone nearby so it's convenient to meet up, someone at a similar skill and commitment level and someone who shares your interests/styles/inspirations within the hobby.

In my case, I would consider myself an intermediate guitar player and have always wanted to find a practice partner. Living in NYC, there is no shortage of musicians, but many have more serious goals and aspirations than I do. As a hobbyist, my main focus isn't playing gigs or being in a band. I’m not trying to practice for hours every day to become an expert. I just want to find someone to play some songs with casually for fun. I’m sure this person exists in my neighborhood, but I had no easy way to find them.

There are apps for specific activities like music collaborations, tennis, or basketball, but I found they often cater to a more serious crowd. Beginners and casual dabblers are usually left on the sideline. That’s why I built Kindred, a way for anyone to connect with others through hobbies.

Here’s a quick overview of how it works:

- Set preferences for age, gender, and location to help you find compatible buddies nearby. - Create a profile focused on your experience level and specific interests within your chosen hobbies. Unlike typical social media, superficial details like looks, education, or career aren’t emphasized. - Meet people through plans. Plans are like traditional events but can have more flexible time and date. You can choose "sometime this week" or even "whenever." Plans with small groups of 4-5 people are encouraged but you can also choose one-on-ones or larger groups. It should feel like you're just making a post about what you want to do to neighbors who fit your preferences instead of it feeling like you're formally hosting a public event.

Check it out here: https://kindredsocialapp.com. The app is currently available for iOS only.

I’d love to hear your feedback and answer any questions!

nprateem 1y ago ↗

What's your strategy for seeding it?

hansonkin 1y ago ↗

Great question! This is definitely the hardest challenge for apps of this kind. There's a lot written out there on how to tackle the cold start problem.

My strategy is to focus locally first especially in NYC where I live. It's going to be a combination of running around in the city going to in person events and doing social media. If I can prove out the concept in one city, then I'll start focusing on other large metropolitan areas.

nprateem 1y ago ↗

I've tried to building some variation of this app several times and it was always at the end that I realised growing it would be a nightmare.

I've had another idea that might hopefully get some traction once I can do an MVP. Hopefully someone solves it soon so I don't have to bother.

hansonkin 1y ago ↗

You're right about there being a lot of similar apps in this space. I think it's evident that the approaches tried so far haven't resonated with people in a meaningful way. And it's very possible my approach is wrong as well. With social apps, the smallest nuance in how it makes people feel can be the deciding factor for whether people use it or not.

I would love to hear more about the challenges you faced as you grew out your previous iterations.

nprateem 1y ago ↗

Tbh I never bothered going to market. I couldn't see a way to monetise. They seemed to suffer several problems:

- Hyperlocal. Basically every few miles is a new market

- If there are no users, new users will search once and never return

- If they succeed and people make new friends, the app becomes redundant (so how to monetise)

- Meetup tried most monetisation options in the early days (eg sponsorship, venues paying, etc). They binned them all because they didn't work (there's a YT video about the founder talking about this if you can dig it out)

- In the same video the meetup guy said they started charging groups partly to cut spam

- You need active users but no spam

So there are multiple challenges. Iirc YC won't fund this kind of app probably because of these issues.

No easy answers really... if you have any I'll be all ears. A better meetup is definitely needed.

If I were to give any advice it would be not to code anything, but work with a business model canvas/value prop canvas until you can find an approach that solves these.

*Update* (Rate limited):

Yeah all those things rely on seeding it somehow and retention.

Anyway, good luck.

hansonkin 1y ago ↗

Yeah I'm not currently looking for YC funding. My goals for this probably don't align with that of YC. I would consider the project a success if I can provide value to people and monetize enough where I can support myself and a small team. If I can make the equivalent of a typical software dev role with this, I would be happy to work on this full time for the rest of my career.

As for making friends, I think new users never returning after initial success is thinking too short term. Throughout someone's life, there will be different needs for your social life. People move around or drift away from existing friends. Also, I want to be clear that this app is NOT a friend making app. It's an app to help you find people to do things with. This means if you want to explore a new hobby and none of the people you know do it, you can use this to build your own group to explore the hobby.

Also for retention, the long term goal for this project is to build a full social life platform. I think there are tools that can be built to help people maintain friendships after making them. The long term vision is for to be the one place you go to manage all parts of your real life social life (not social media). Right now I'm just tackling the portion of the problem that is most pressing which is discoverability.

_spduchamp 1y ago ↗

Why isn't this a web app?

I wouldn't use this unless I could access it through a browser.