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Comment by slenocchio | Hacker News Reader

My team and I are building an app to help guys make friends. Right now it's basically a bumble BFF clone but we're working on adding a new feature that will put people into small, local groups based on your interests (climbing, chess, board games, you get the idea).

FYI the network isn't super big right now, a few hundred scattered across the world. Currently trying to focus on building a network in NYC.

Anyway if anyone's interested you can go to our landing page here: https://www.olleyapp.io/ (it's in progress)

or go directly to iOS/Android app store and search for "Olley".

Any feedback is much appreciated. Muchas gracias amigos.

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I'm glad to see someone is working on this. I spent a good amount of time prototyping a similar idea a while back and decided I wasn't the right one to solve this problem, but I think it is a very important one. I was going into it with a group-only approach, as the 1:1 connections make things feel more serious versus being one person in a group. Though with groups you don't want to feel like you're the stranger in a group of existing friends, so having it create "fresh" groups is ideal (unlike Meetup).

Good luck building this, I'll have to keep an eye on it.

That’s cool! Before even seeing it, my feedback is to make sure no sexual/romance kind of encounters can take place via the app. All other people meetings apps seem to be sexually oriented.

Your comment reminded me of the fugitive group from the movie “The Lobster” (2015).

Anyway, it’s not clear to me why these should be prevented or how. Let people do what they want.

To avoid ambiguity. What does this married person I see here in the is really looking for?

Some feedback, but not the kind you want. It's "Muchas" because gracias is feminine :')

Woops, muchas gracias!

Other than targeting ("for men"), how does this differ from Meetup?

If meetup is the bar they will probably do fine. I’m not sure if you used it recently but meetup has become an absolute spam fest/useless for actually organizing events (in my experience). At one point it was great but I think it’s lost it’s community.

Right now like I mentioned our app is basically a clone of bumble BFF, i.e. you create a profile and you swipe to match with people you want to connect to.

But we think swiping might be a bit of a weird way to make friends so the next major feature we're releasing will help guys find small groups (like 4-6 people) who share a similar interest and live close to each other.

Meetup seems like it _could_ do something like this but in my own experience it seems generally catered to groups that are larger and more formal. Also as someone else mentioned it seems like the quality of the network has degraded a lot.

The friction with Meetup, is that I'm not "a whiskey guy", or a hiker, or a rock climber. I have hobbies, but I'm not defined by them, so meeting up just on that hobby doesn't work. The app needs to detoxify a man going on a date with another man for non-romantic, non-sexual purposes.

The people on Meetup aren’t defined by their hobbies either. I have had wonderful times on group hikes through Meetup, and I don’t consider myself to be “a hiker.” I just enjoy hiking sometimes. Same with the other people who were there.

If you see something you think you might enjoy doing, I encourage you to give it a shot. Even if you’re not a [that thing]-er.

I live in Europe and have moved to more than 10 cities in my life. It always takes so much time for me to reach the point where I can confidently say that I know a city well. I wish I could make friends with people who have been residents of the city for a longer period. I've tried using Meetup to meet people, but it often full of newcomers.

A damn good idea!

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