YOLLO Journey - Friends to Founders

We met a few years ago at GWU, sharing the same classes, and eventually, hanging out together during class breaks became our daily routine. By the second semester, Bindaas in Foggy Bottom and Starbucks on E Street had become our go-to hangout spots, the place we’d crash after lectures to catch up, laugh, cry, and talk about literally everything under the sun. We’d meet up and spill all the gossip about who was dating whom, who gave us the ick in class, who broke our hearts, which professor’s class to avoid and which free food event we were hitting next.

It was not just the conversations, it was the feeling of being completely in sync with each other’s lives in that exact moment. If something felt interesting, we would discuss it more, ask questions, show interest. If not, we moved on to the next happening thing. Natural, unforced, in the moment. It felt we were in control of our moments, what we wanted to talk about and for how long.

Our friendship wasn’t defined by our past - it was shaped by how we showed up on that particular day when either of us needed to share good or bad news or even insignificant news of the day. Our friendship happened in the moment. It was not based on our good or bad moments that happened weeks or months ago.

During summer and winter break, when we were in different cities for internships or vacation plans, we tried to stay connected through Snap, Insta, chat apps - you name it, and we tried it. But nothing could replicate or even come close to those spontaneous, chaotic, in-the-moment convos we used to have at Bindaas and Starbucks. We were always behind each other’s life updates until we would return for the term.

Even though we would meet after weeks or months break, there was never anything awkward between us similar to pending un-replied chats, permanent posts waiting for us to like or comment on them, moments that expired before we could enjoy them fully. We would just start from where we left when we went away. Those drinks at Decades, tater tots at Tonic and runs to Lincoln Memorial.

It didn’t mean we didn't have our own ups and downs, fights, tantrums, jealousy, judgments etc. but everything was temporary in our daily lives compared to these apps. We would easily move on with time without any awkwardness. We were able to move on at our own terms. No one said finding and keeping real friends is easy. That’s the point. It’s the hard stuff that made us cross the trenches of acquaintance to friends.

Once we graduated, we moved away from Washington D.C. We made promises to stay in touch with each other, regular calls and meeting in person at least twice a year. People say that once you graduate, friendships tend to fade, especially with distance, and never being in the same place all the time. It's like you slowly fall out of sync with each other. No more pulling up to someone's dorm, vibing in class, or linking up for a night out.

Friendships can wither without time and attention. Busy lives did actually make it harder with time, and then came the time difference. We thought we would call each other at least once a week, then it became once every two weeks, and slowly, we started drifting apart. We again tried everything we could hoping to continue our spark - but nothing was able to help us from falling out of sync with each other’s lives.

Texts were being seen too late, becoming chaotic with too many pending ones to reply, “who texted whom first” dramas, Snapchat was creating too many misunderstandings, whether stories and texts were being seen, if seen, why not responded to, stories disappearing before you had a chance to respond. Also, BeReal got boring after a week of being real and the next day 9 AM disposable camera moments killed that real-time context. Widgets and calendars started feeling like a job and let’s be honest, we all know how much we love our jobs.

And FB, Insta, and TikTok, even YouTube if you count it as a social media? That was a whole different mess, with posts from weeks or even months ago still showing up on our feeds like they were happening now (“Going out tonight” – posted 6 months ago!).

Call us crazy, but we even tried Twitter and Reddit to share interesting discussions but guess what those too were often days and weeks old. Then we thought why not try Pinterest to discuss new ideas or use Chinese apps hoping something would work. Eventually, our friendship started to fade. No wonder Zuckerberg is now pushing AI friends after making everyone fall out of their real ones.

The issue was not that we didn’t want to use these apps or post on them, the problem was they were constantly working against our friendship. And none of them were going to change overnight for us to save our friendship. We just wanted to move to the basics of how we talk to friends or strangers who become our future friends in real life.

That’s when we both decided that we needed to do something about it. We went back and reflected on what brought us together, the basics of what made us friends and how our friendship began during that first semester at GWU. We didn’t swipe on each other on a random app or found each other because we crossed paths on an app or even asked each other about our likes and dislikes the moment we met or even telling each other everything about our past before deciding to be acquaintances and then friends and now co-founders.

We wanted to build something that would help us share our daily moments with each other and our friends, something that didn’t come with an expiry or the pressure of permanence. We didn’t want to talk chronologically because we never did in real life, and we definitely didn’t want it to be only about the most important things happening in our lives. We didn't become friends by constantly obsessing over what was the most happening thing in our lives. That’s not how our friendship began; it was built on sharing anything and everything, even mundane everyday moments not just the most important or exciting highlights.

We wanted a space where we could talk about all our good and bad days for as long as WE WANTED in a spontaneous and random manner. A space where the boring or forgettable things didn’t just hang in there like a random, awkward birthday post on someone’s Facebook wall forever until its deleted. We didn’t want to put deadlines on our moments that they should expire at 24 hours. And we definitely didn’t want the whole “who texted first” or “who left whom on read” and “who sent snap or locket to who first” to come between us.

That is not what our friendship was built on. We just wanted to go back to the basics. To what made us friends in the first place, and what kept us going all through GWU. In the real world, there’s no way to find the same serendipitous social interactions we had in colleges or town squares. So what do we do when we want that same level of social interaction when we are in different offices, different parts of the same city, different neighborhoods? And that’s how YOLLO was born.

Hopefully, it will help save your friendship too!