A different kind of small

A lot of people have tried to build software for friendship. Most of them stopped.

The first wave of personal CRMs launched between 2018 and 2020. Beautiful products. Serious teams. Y Combinator backed at least one. Famous venture firms wrote real cheques. Then, one by one, the apps closed their doors, or were absorbed into team products, or quietly pivoted to selling to companies instead of people.

I do not begrudge them this. Building a profit-seeking business out of friendship is a brutal puzzle. You need millions of users to pay back the people who funded you. To get millions of users you have to grow loudly. Growing loudly contradicts the calm thing the app was supposed to be in the first place. The flywheel turns inside out.

Orbit is built on a different shape.

What keeps it honest

Orbit is self-funded and founder-built. It is not a venture-backed startup, and it is not funded or owned by Ludo Leisure Suite.

Ludo matters because it gives Orbit backend support where a local-first app genuinely needs a shared edge: RSVP pages, public previews, delivery, and boring infrastructure. That support is narrow on purpose. It does not make Ludo the source of truth for your relationships, and it does not turn Orbit into a cloud relationship graph.

I run Ludo too, and that experience shapes Orbit. Ludo builds payment and operations software for big venues. Agricultural shows. Festivals. Stadiums. It taught me how to make heavy public infrastructure feel calm under pressure.

Orbit applies that taste in the opposite direction: quiet, private, local-first software for one person at a time.

Orbit does not need a fundraise, a growth team, or a story about becoming the next giant network. It does not need ten million users. It does not need a thousand.

Ten will do, as long as those ten quietly tell a friend each.

What that lets me do

I can make Orbit local on your phone. There is no relationship cloud. The notes you write live on your device. I could not see them if I tried.

I do not need to know who you are. No sign in for the core memory loop. No analytics that follow you between sessions. Your circles are yours.

I do not run ads. I never will. If you ever see one inside Orbit, send me a note. I will be embarrassed and remove it.

I do not need you to open the app every day. Orbit is at its best sitting quietly in the background, surfacing only when someone you care about has gone unusually quiet.

What I might charge for, someday

If Orbit ever takes payment from you, it should be for something chosen around the practice, not the practice itself.

A pack of postcards, printed and mailed. A richer shared page for a gathering. A printed map of your circles. A memory book. A conversation deck for hard moments, written by people who know. Small services or objects that help care travel into the real world.

I will not charge for the core memory loop. I will not put remembering people, noticing drift, private Moments, basic follow-through, export, or leaving the product behind a paywall.

If the postcards do not pay for themselves, I will stop printing postcards. Orbit will keep working anyway.

The success metric

Most apps in 2026 measure themselves by daily active users, session length, and push-notification open rates. I measure Orbit by a much smaller number.

Orbit is a success if ten people use it, and each of those ten tells one friend.

That is the entire growth plan. Slow word of mouth. No paid acquisition. No referral mechanics. No streaks. No leaderboards. No "you have not opened the app in three days" guilt notifications.

If you find the app useful, mention it to one person who might. If you do not, please do not. The world has enough loud software.

Made with love, not capital

This is not a startup pitch. No Series A coming. No exit plan. No acquisition fantasy.

Orbit exists because I wanted it to exist, in the world, working quietly, owned by the people who use it. Backend support exists for explicit shared edges. The relationship memory itself belongs on your device.

It is anti-vampiric software. It does not feed on your attention. It does not need your private relationship data to function. It does not need your anxiety to keep its lights on.

It is a small, careful tool, built by someone who cares about the people in his own life. Offered freely to anyone who wants to do the same.

If that sounds like something you want to live with on your phone, the store links are below.

If it does not, no hard feelings. Most of friendship has happened, beautifully, without any apps at all, for the last several thousand years. I am just here to make a small part of it slightly easier to keep up with.