Aotearoa & Australia · Invite or apply
It’s not a dating app.
It’s 500 people in your city.
Dating apps let everyone on — they’re paid by the month, so more people means more subscriptions and your odds are your problem. Here it’s 500 at a time in each city. Everyone real and named, nobody can message you until you’ve said yes, and anyone who goes quiet loses their spot to someone who won’t.
Free, and staying free. LinkedIn required. Every application is read by a human.
Why this exists
My mates are extraordinary.
The apps couldn’t tell.
This started as a list of names — people I’d vouch for in a heartbeat, all of them single, none of them single for any good reason.
I know a lot of remarkable people. They run teams, they build things, they fly across the country for a friend’s terrible birthday party. Every one of them is someone you’d want a stranger to be lucky enough to find. Most of them were single. Not one of them was single because of anything wrong with them.
They were single because of how the apps make money. A dating app is paid by the month, and it’s paid by people who are still on it. Your match is their churn. So they let everyone on — every extra person is another subscription — and then leave you to find each other in a crowd of hundreds of thousands.
That’s why it feels like work. The good ones get buried. The quiet ones never get shown. You end up with a hundred matches and four conversations, and half the people you matched with were never really going to reply. Nobody chose that for you; it’s just what a business built on you staying eventually looks like.
The idea was never the problem. Meeting someone you’d never otherwise meet, with a bit of structure around it, is a good idea. It just can’t be a dating app. So this isn’t one. It’s free, there’s nothing to buy, and only 500 people are on it at a time in each city — few enough that you can actually get through them, and every one of them a real, named person who has to keep showing up to stay. The only number we’re trying to grow is how many people leave.
— the founder, who was on the list
The scoreboard
Every app keeps score. Ours counts people leaving.
A game is just what somebody decided to measure. Dating apps measure the things that keep the subscription alive. Here’s every number we care about, in full.
- Days you stayed on the appDays until you’re off it
- How many people they can sign upHow few we let on at once
- Matches you never messagedCouples who left and never came back
- Subscriptions renewed this monthNothing. It’s free, and there’s nothing to sell you.
- Swipes per sessionOne real move a week. That’s the whole target.
No points, no streaks, no badge for opening the app thirty days running. A streak is a metric for a company that needs you back tomorrow. The only streak here is one that ends.
Live numbers
The score, right now.
Real numbers, straight from the database. Never names. The cap is per city, so cities are listed rather than added up — and the middle tile is the only number we’re trying to grow.
How it works
Four steps. One of them is a plank.
No infinite scroll, no boosts, no paid placement, no ranking quietly deciding who’s worth showing you. A small city-sized room, a week at a time, and a reason to actually talk to the people in it.
- 01
Apply with LinkedIn
Real name, real job, real face. A human reads every application — there’s no score and no ranking deciding in the background whether you’re worth showing.
- 02
Take a spot — or a number
Every city has 500 spots. If yours is full you’re on the waitlist in order — and it’s your city’s queue, not the whole country’s.
- 03
Stay active. Meet people.
Like, pass, message. Nobody can write to you until you’ve liked them back. One real move a week keeps your spot.
- 04
Sail off — or walk the plank
Find someone and you both leave together, freeing two spots. Go quiet for 7 days and your spot goes to the next person waiting.
How it feels to use
No pile-on. No paying to be seen. No ghosts.
Most of what makes dating apps exhausting isn’t the people on them — it’s a design that pays off when you stay. Here’s what’s designed out, and none of it is a setting you have to go and find.
Nobody messages you first
Chat only opens when you’ve both liked each other. There is no inbox for strangers, no “message request”, no way around it.
Nobody can pay to reach you
There are no boosts, no priority, no promoted profiles — for anyone, at any price. Everyone gets the same standing, which is the whole reason this is free.
Everyone has a name attached
A real name, a real face and a public work profile. It is the least anonymous dating app there is, and that changes how people behave before they’ve typed a word.
No collectors, no ghosts
Go quiet for 7 days and you lose your spot. Matching with people you were never going to answer is the most exhausting thing about dating apps, and this is the rule that removes them.
Approved for balance, not volume
A human approves every application with the ratio in mind. If one side runs ahead, that side waits. It’s the least glamorous part of the job and the one that decides whether any of this works.
A human reads every report
Report from any card or any chat. Harassment or lying about who you are means removal the first time — no warning, no cooldown, no re-application.
The plank
Go quiet, lose your spot. That’s the deal.
Matching with people who were never going to reply is the single most exhausting thing about dating apps — and every other app is perfectly happy to let them sit there and keep paying. We can’t be. There’s nothing to pay, and an idle spot is just someone waiting who would have used it.
Counts as active
- Liking or passing on someone
- Sending a message
- Editing your profile
Doesn’t count
- Opening the app and staring at the deck
The crew can also plank on sight for conduct. No warning is owed for that one.
- 5
Day 5
Warning
A banner in the app and an email. It says: do something. Anything meaningful counts.
- 7
Day 7
The plank
Your spot goes to the first person waiting in your city — immediately, not at midnight. No fee to keep it, and no way to buy it back.
- 30
Day 30
Cooldown
Then you can re-apply. You go to the back of the queue like everyone else. No hard feelings; someone needed the spot.
Why LinkedIn
Because a name and a job change how people behave.
It’s the least romantic website on earth, which is exactly why it works here. Everyone has a public record of being a real, employed adult, checkable in one click — a far better filter than anything an algorithm could sell you, and the reason bad behaviour is actually punishable.
Real people
No burner profiles, no three-year-old photos with no name attached. Everyone here is who they say they are, and can be checked in one click.
Real jobs
You’ll know what someone actually does before the first drink. That’s half the small talk gone — the boring half.
Accountability
People behave better when their full name and their employer are attached to it. That’s not cynicism, it’s the whole design.
Someone real, 33
Wellington · Product lead at a company you’ve heard of
“I’d rather have one good dinner than four hundred bad chats.” — an example card. On the real deck, this is a person, with a link.
Questions
Things people ask before they apply.
Short answers. The long ones are in the rules.
Will I get a hundred messages from strangers?
No. Nobody can message you until you’ve liked them back — there is no stranger inbox and no way to buy your way into one. The volume that makes dating apps exhausting is mostly a side effect of letting everyone on, and we don’t.
What stops it being eighty percent men?
A human approves every application with the ratio in mind, and approves for balance rather than volume. When one side runs ahead, applications from that side wait. It’s slower and it’s the only thing that makes a small cohort worth being in.
Is it free?
Yes. No premium tier, no boosts, no paying to be seen. That isn’t generosity — it’s the point. The moment you’re paying by the month, the company is better off if you don’t find anyone, and every ranking it builds after that quietly agrees.
Then how does this make money?
It doesn’t. It’s small, it’s cheap to run, and the founder covers it. If that ever has to change, it won’t change into a subscription that pays us to keep you single — active members hear first, in writing, and the rules page changes before anything else does.
Why 500 people per city?
Per city, because who lives near you is the only pool that matters — a full Auckland shouldn’t keep anyone in Wellington waiting. And 500 because it’s few enough that you can genuinely get through them and everyone stays visible, but not so few that it’s the same twelve faces by Thursday.
Who gets in?
People who’d rather have one good dinner than four hundred bad chats. Serious about their work, serious about finding someone, bad at swiping. A human reads every application, LinkedIn is required, and the founder’s network in New Zealand and Australia comes first.
What counts as “active”?
Liking or passing on someone, sending a message, or editing your profile. Opening the app and staring at the deck doesn’t count. One real move a week keeps your spot.
Is my LinkedIn shown to people?
To active members only, as a badge and a link on your card. Never to the public, never to the waitlist, never to anyone who has left. “Verified” means you signed in with LinkedIn; otherwise a human checked the URL before you were approved.
What if someone behaves badly?
Report them from their card or your chat, and a human — not a queue, not a form — reads it. Harassment, pestering after a no, or lying about who you are means removal the first time: no warning, no cooldown, no re-application. Their real name being attached is why this is enforceable at all.
I walked the plank. Can I come back?
After 30 days, yes. You re-apply and go to the back of your city’s queue. No hard feelings — someone waiting just needed the spot more than you did that week.
What happens when a couple sails off?
Both of you are marked as sailed. Your two spots go to the first two people waiting, immediately. The counter we actually care about ticks up by one. Your profiles leave the deck — and we’d rather you never needed to come back.
Is it New Zealand only?
New Zealand and Australia to start — the founder’s friends and their friends. Distance matters in dating, and we’d rather do two countries properly. Elsewhere? Apply anyway; a city opens the moment there are enough people in it.
500 spots in your city. One of them is yours.
Bring your LinkedIn and a bit of nerve. If your city is full you’ll get a number — and the number moves, because people here keep leaving. That’s the idea.