Venyou

The problem

Venue discovery apps usually solve half the problem: they help you find somewhere, then abandon you. Venyou's thesis was that the interesting part is social — that the reason you go to an event is partly who else is going, and an app that knows that can do something the listing sites cannot.

That makes it a harder build than it looks. Discovery, booking, and real-time social all in one product, for a market with its own expectations.

What we built

• GPS-based discovery of events and venues, with maps and pathfinding for getting there
• Real-time chat over sockets, so attendees of an event can actually talk before it happens
• OAuth2 authentication with social login, because friction at sign-up kills a social product
• Direct venue booking from inside the app
• An ads and notifications layer for the business model

Shipped on both the App Store and Google Play.

Leading the team

This was a four-person engineering team, and the first one our founder ran end to end. Real-time features are where a team either learns to coordinate or produces something that works on one machine and nowhere else — socket state, presence, and reconnection logic do not survive four people each solving them their own way.

Spiro Alisandratos, Venyou's founder, had struggled to find the right freelancer before this engagement. That is a common story, and it is part of why Cosmic Shaft exists as a firm rather than an individual: a firm can be held to a standard, and can put more than one person behind a commitment.