Hinge Alums Raise $8.5 Million To Turn Social Media Scrolling Into Real-World Meetups

"There's a lot of apps helping you meet new people for dating or friendship, but not a lot are focused on your existing relationships and how you maintain and nurture those over time. The app pulls key details from social media content and turns them into a calendar-style hold to share with friends or family, turning social media scrolling into real-world plans."

"We're not just transcribing a screenshot of a game you're going to. We're finding where the tickets are. We're adding value by pulling together those details and organizing them. Rodeo allows people to upload content, like a social media link or even screenshots of their group chats; then, it extracts relevant details like a restaurant's address or where reservations are available."

Rodeo is a new app founded by former Hinge executives Sam Levy and Tim MacGougan that addresses the common problem of forgetting about saved social media content. The platform extracts key details from social media links, screenshots, and group chats—such as restaurant addresses and ticket availability—and transforms them into calendar-style holds that users can share with friends and family. During its beta phase, 20,000 people used the app. The company recently announced an $8.5 million seed funding round backed by venture capital firms including Foundry, 359 Capital, and Oceans. Levy and MacGougan left Hinge in 2022, where they held senior product roles, and spent years developing solutions focused on helping people spend more time together.

Read at Forbes