Gathering the World
As I release LitCircle I reflect on how consistent the theme of social discovery has been in my own life. From high school’s weekend congregations at the Kolligian house to being 21 and meeting up with friends at the Palisades bluffs, the question remained: where’s the party? These revolving instances remind me why I felt so compelled to build an event discovery platform in the first place: I’ve always itched to curate a night’s best experiences.
LitCircle is the app I’ve built to solve that basic inclination. My mindset is to provide a entertaining space for you to share your night’s most captivating moments. I think seeing the parties your friends are attending is more relevant for you than seeing static event description pages. And that even if you can’t join them, at the very least you can learn how your friends spent their night. A video coming from a party tells you more than a location pin ever can. And it represents an opportunity for entertainment regardless of whether you personally attend the party.
It’s now been more than five years since I graduated from High School with little excitement for the expected conventional path. Steve Jobs’ famous words “stay hungry, stay foolish” reverberated as I took shape of a singular dream that I too could helm a great technology company. Unbeknownst to me then, as I pondered my own future, a crazy idea was coming to life up my street. The idea of a disappearing photos app was little understood then, but few now would undervalue Snapchat’s impact on our lives. My mission is to make LitCircle yet another dent in the universe.
LitCircle isn’t about sharing an un-tethered photo to Instagram or an ephemeral video to Snapchat. It’s about communicating your activity at this very moment— not just your night’s video, but your night’s narrative. It’s about letting your friends know whether they should join you. A place for you share your night’s funny, crazy moments, away from grandma’s view on Facebook. But, most of all, for those friends to learn where you are so they can join you without having to bother you with text messages.
I think back to the countless moments in High School I shared with my late friend Kyle Kolligian that I wish I still had with me. I think of the countless crazy experiences with so many different friend groups after High School that words could never do justice. It’s no coincidence then that it culminates here. I’ve built LitCircle to be the platform to curate your experiences among friends and to have them with you for the rest of your life.
The Plancast founder left an envisaging note in his company’s post-mortem that read: “Despite all of these challenges, I still believe someone will eventually figure out how to make and market a viable service that fulfills our aims, namely to help people share and discover events more socially.” It’s my belief that LitCircle will be that service.
Together, let’s gather the world :)
Jordan
