River is the IRL community OS—a new way to meet like-minded people near you. We’ve powered hundreds of meetups for Tim Ferriss, The All-In Podcast & Bryan Johnson by turning followers into local hosts. Join, host, or launch events with River.
Really excited to finally share what we’ve been building. One of the biggest challenges leading up to launch was rebuilding v2 of most of the app, not just giving it a new look, but making sure it played nicely with everything we’d already built in v1. It meant rewriting a lot of things from the ground up while still keeping the heart of what made the original work.
It wasn’t always smooth there were plenty of moments where things broke, felt like they weren’t coming together, or we had to rethink stuff we thought was done. But that’s what made the process feel real. It pushed us to be better, to care about the small details, and to keep the experience thoughtful for the people using it.
There’s something kind of amazing about watching all those late nights, debugging sessions, and design iterations turn into something that people actually use and hopefully, really love. That’s the part that makes all the effort, all the chaos, feel worth it.
@thisiskp_ All other event tools wait for an ambitious host to create an event. And honestly some of the most impressive and interesting people are too busy to invent an event series and get everyone to attend. And even if someone puts together a community event, the brand doesn't have any oversight on that host, and therefore doesn't want to promote one-off events.
With the other event tools I couldn't automatically source hosts from the community, so much fewer events actually happened.
Designing River has been all about finding that sweet spot between powerful and easy to use. The biggest challenge? Making something that can support thousands of different people and use cases, while still feeling simple and intuitive. It’s been a deep dive into details — every screen, button, and flow had to make sense for people using it every day, all over the world. And honestly? That’s what makes it exciting ✨
I honestly think going to community-led IRL events is one of the best (and least awkward) ways to make friends as an adult—because everyone there is already your kind of people ;). No small talk about the weather, no forced networking—just chill vibes and real connection.
It’s wild to see how these low-key hangouts are changing lives around the world. People are building actual friendships at events hosted by everyday folks who just want to create space for good convos and good company.
And the best part? You don’t need to be a pro event planner or have a massive following to host one. Hosting is simple and genuinely fun—especially when the hard stuff (like promotion) is already handled. Once that’s out of the way, the magic happens: great conversations, new connections, and a community you didn’t even know you were missing.
Absolutely love the vibe here — sounds like you all earned every single commit (and every spoon of nutty pudding 😄). Props for pushing through 9k+ commits and still having enough humor left for a fun post like this. Also, Zen to PR ratio of 1:1? Now that’s elite engineering hygiene 😤
Super cool to hear your thoughts on Vercel + Supabase — that dev resource pain is real. Would love to know more about how you optimized for cold starts (any fav patterns or edge cache configs?), and especially how you set up honeypots for the DDOS! That sounds like a blog post waiting to happen.
@williamrobertscott the biggest daily painpoint with nextjs/vercel is def the resource consumption for dev machines - obviously we're partially responsible with producing all that code ;-) but we had to employ cyclic-dependency checkers and reduce the number (and size - hey google libphonenumber!) of node dependencies we use in order to keep the hygiene in check. We're somewhat ok with it right now but we're running on beefy dev machines.
Cold starts are especially important for us for for the event pages (as there's basically nothing to display if we don't have partial event info in the cache) - here we leverage vercels built-in caching where they store data next to the compute instance in a kv store. That works great, especially with app router - extremely smooth experience. We went through the painful process of migrating from /pages to /app router and benefits of that (streaming data + suspense boundaries) really pay off!
WOWWW! This is super cool — congrats on the launch! Really love the idea of giving online communities an easy way to spill into real life. The app feels clean and super intuitive too, which makes a huge difference when you’re trying to convince people to actually show up to something 😅
Also kinda obsessed with how you’re using it for Founder Fridays and All-In meetups!! Excited to see where it goes from here!
@madalenascarneiro thank you Madalena! So glad to have you as an advisor and for developing our brand at River!
Report
Congrats on the launch! This looks like a great way to build community and encourage more meet-ups IRL. Having the All-In Podcast and This Week In Startups on the platform is a great start.
The ability to collect photos from your guests on the event page is a nice way to engage event attendees, and I like that the platform allows you to create waitlists to gauge interest for starting a community. Excited to see how this develops. Joined 😊.
River
Really excited to finally share what we’ve been building. One of the biggest challenges leading up to launch was rebuilding v2 of most of the app, not just giving it a new look, but making sure it played nicely with everything we’d already built in v1. It meant rewriting a lot of things from the ground up while still keeping the heart of what made the original work.
It wasn’t always smooth there were plenty of moments where things broke, felt like they weren’t coming together, or we had to rethink stuff we thought was done. But that’s what made the process feel real. It pushed us to be better, to care about the small details, and to keep the experience thoughtful for the people using it.
There’s something kind of amazing about watching all those late nights, debugging sessions, and design iterations turn into something that people actually use and hopefully, really love. That’s the part that makes all the effort, all the chaos, feel worth it.
River
@lemmymwaura Love having you on the team, Lemmy!
Netlify
Congrats on the launch! Big fan of Rachel’s tweets :)
What specifically frustrated you the most about incumbents / existing players before you decided to build River?
River
@thisiskp_ All other event tools wait for an ambitious host to create an event. And honestly some of the most impressive and interesting people are too busy to invent an event series and get everyone to attend. And even if someone puts together a community event, the brand doesn't have any oversight on that host, and therefore doesn't want to promote one-off events.
With the other event tools I couldn't automatically source hosts from the community, so much fewer events actually happened.
River
Designing River has been all about finding that sweet spot between powerful and easy to use. The biggest challenge? Making something that can support thousands of different people and use cases, while still feeling simple and intuitive. It’s been a deep dive into details — every screen, button, and flow had to make sense for people using it every day, all over the world. And honestly? That’s what makes it exciting ✨
River
@martynka Love having you on the team, Martyna!
River
I honestly think going to community-led IRL events is one of the best (and least awkward) ways to make friends as an adult—because everyone there is already your kind of people ;). No small talk about the weather, no forced networking—just chill vibes and real connection.
It’s wild to see how these low-key hangouts are changing lives around the world. People are building actual friendships at events hosted by everyday folks who just want to create space for good convos and good company.
And the best part? You don’t need to be a pro event planner or have a massive following to host one. Hosting is simple and genuinely fun—especially when the hard stuff (like promotion) is already handled. Once that’s out of the way, the magic happens: great conversations, new connections, and a community you didn’t even know you were missing.
River
@anariverasch Couldn't have done any of this without you, Ana!
Elisi : AI-powered Goal Management App
Absolutely love the vibe here — sounds like you all earned every single commit (and every spoon of nutty pudding 😄). Props for pushing through 9k+ commits and still having enough humor left for a fun post like this. Also, Zen to PR ratio of 1:1? Now that’s elite engineering hygiene 😤
Super cool to hear your thoughts on Vercel + Supabase — that dev resource pain is real. Would love to know more about how you optimized for cold starts (any fav patterns or edge cache configs?), and especially how you set up honeypots for the DDOS! That sounds like a blog post waiting to happen.
And yes… ship-to-prod gang rise up 💥
River
@williamrobertscott the biggest daily painpoint with nextjs/vercel is def the resource consumption for dev machines - obviously we're partially responsible with producing all that code ;-) but we had to employ cyclic-dependency checkers and reduce the number (and size - hey google libphonenumber!) of node dependencies we use in order to keep the hygiene in check. We're somewhat ok with it right now but we're running on beefy dev machines.
Cold starts are especially important for us for for the event pages (as there's basically nothing to display if we don't have partial event info in the cache) - here we leverage vercels built-in caching where they store data next to the compute instance in a kv store. That works great, especially with app router - extremely smooth experience. We went through the painful process of migrating from /pages to /app router and benefits of that (streaming data + suspense boundaries) really pay off!
River
@williamrobertscott That's ZYN not zen. Zyn is a nicotine product. There is no zen here, no sir.
Olivine Marketplace
WOWWW! This is super cool — congrats on the launch!
Really love the idea of giving online communities an easy way to spill into real life. The app feels clean and super intuitive too, which makes a huge difference when you’re trying to convince people to actually show up to something 😅
Also kinda obsessed with how you’re using it for Founder Fridays and All-In meetups!! Excited to see where it goes from here!
River
@madalenascarneiro Thank you so much for all your support Madalena! Will never thank you enough for designing the River brand for us!
River
@madalenascarneiro thank you Madalena! So glad to have you as an advisor and for developing our brand at River!
Congrats on the launch! This looks like a great way to build community and encourage more meet-ups IRL. Having the All-In Podcast and This Week In Startups on the platform is a great start.
The ability to collect photos from your guests on the event page is a nice way to engage event attendees, and I like that the platform allows you to create waitlists to gauge interest for starting a community. Excited to see how this develops. Joined 😊.
River
@smjburton Thank you so much! I really appreciate your joining and following along!