Why you miss what's happening around the corner
Your city is alive right now — but the information about it is scattered across feeds, posters and group chats you're not in. Here's how we think about local discovery.
Something worth doing is happening within a five-minute walk of you, almost always. A set that just started. A quiz night short one team. A flea market closing in an hour. The problem isn’t a lack of life — it’s that the information about that life sits in the wrong places.
The feed doesn’t know where you’re standing
Social feeds are built for reach, not proximity. A post about tonight’s gig reaches someone in another city as easily as the person standing outside the door. What’s relevant because you are here, now gets buried under what’s popular somewhere else.
Everyone knows the result: you find out the next day.
The poster needs you to walk past it
Physical posters are still one of the best local media — but only if you happen to pass by. A poster can’t tell you the queue is short right now, that seats are left, or that the room is electric.
Group chats are closed by design
A lot of local life lives in chats: the club, the neighbourhood, the crew that plays padel on Tuesdays. That works beautifully for the people already inside, and not at all for everyone else. If you’re new in town, you’re outside by definition.
What’s missing is a “here and now” layer
Three tools we already use are each good at something different:
- Maps are good at where things are — not what’s happening.
- Social feeds are good at what people did — usually after the fact.
- Group chats are good at coordination — inside a closed circle.
What’s missing is an open layer on top of the place itself: what’s happening here, who’s here, and can I join?
How we think about tojo
tojo builds that missing piece: a chat tied to places instead of to people you already know. You see what’s happening nearby right now, step into the conversation, and join the moment — without needing an invitation first.
Three principles guide the work:
- Proximity over reach. What’s happening near you matters more than what’s popular far away.
- Now over archive. A conversation about tonight is worth more than a photo album from last week.
- Open over closed. Places should be something you can walk into, not something you need an invite for.
The app isn’t out yet. If you want to hear the day it goes live, join the waitlist — we’ll write then, and not otherwise.