Founder's NOTES

16 April 2026

The problem with Meetup, Facebook Events, and every other social app

Let’s be honest about something.

The tools we’ve been given to solve adult loneliness aren’t working. Not really. And it’s not because people aren’t trying — it’s because the tools were never designed to do what we actually need them to do.

Meetup, Facebook Events, dating apps repurposed for friendship, workplace social platforms, neighbourhood apps — they all share the same fundamental flaw. They get you to the room. They leave everything else to chance.

And chance, it turns out, isn’t a strategy.

What Meetup gets right — and where it falls short

Meetup deserves credit for one thing: it understood early that shared interests matter. Putting people in a room around something they care about is smarter than putting them in a room around nothing at all.

But Meetup events are often large. Sometimes very large. And something happens to human behaviour in large groups — we default to the familiar, we stay on the surface, we gravitate toward the people we already know. The conditions for genuine connection quietly disappear as the headcount climbs.

There’s also no real matching happening. You show up because the event exists and it’s nearby. Not because the other people there are particularly right for you. It’s proximity, not compatibility.

What Facebook Events gets wrong

Facebook Events has a discoverability problem and a trust problem simultaneously.

The discoverability problem: events live inside Facebook’s algorithm, which means they surface to you based on what Facebook thinks will keep you engaged — not what will actually serve you. The best local event of the week might never reach you because it doesn’t have enough social proof yet.

The trust problem: Facebook is a broadcast platform. Everything on it is performative by design. You’re not showing up to meet people — you’re showing up to be seen. That’s a fundamentally different energy to the one that creates genuine belonging.

And then there’s the sheer scale of it. Facebook has nearly three billion users. Events on that platform carry the weight of that scale — they feel impersonal before you’ve even walked through the door.

The dating app retrofit

Several apps have tried to pivot from romantic matching to friendship matching. The logic seems sound — you’re already matching people based on compatibility, why not apply that to friendship?

The problem is the mechanic. Swiping is designed for attraction. It creates a specific psychological dynamic — evaluation, judgment, the quiet sting of being left-swiped — that is actively hostile to the vulnerability friendship requires.

You can’t swipe your way to a genuine mate. The mechanic undermines the mission.

What all of them miss

Here’s the thing none of these platforms have solved: the verified connection.

Every connection made through Instagram, Facebook, Meetup, or any friendship app is unverified. You can connect with someone you’ve never met, will never meet, and have no intention of meeting. The connection is digital by default and stays digital unless you do something about it.

That’s not how friendship works. Friendship is physical. It requires presence. It requires showing up in the same place at the same time and choosing to be there together.

No existing platform makes that the foundation. They all treat in-person meeting as a possible outcome — a nice-to-have — rather than the point.

What Ternpath does differently

Ternpath is built around four decisions that set it apart from everything that came before:

Small groups — capped at fifteen people. Small enough that you’re not invisible. Big enough that conversation can go somewhere unexpected.

Genuine interest matching — not proximity alone, not algorithm guessing. Interests you actually declared, matched to events built around them.

Connection before you arrive — a group chat with your fellow attendees means the first conversation isn’t cold. You’ve already broken the ice before you walk through the door.

And every friendship is verified face to face. Not a follow. Not a match. Real people, at the same place, who chose to show up — and who connect in person when they get there.

That’s not an incremental improvement on what exists. That’s a different category entirely.

We’re not a better Meetup. We’re not a friendlier Facebook Events. We’re not a platonic Tinder.

We’re a belonging app — built for real life. And there’s nothing else quite like it.

Ternpath is a belonging app — built for real life. Find out more at ternpath.com

13 April 2026

9 April 2026

Belonging before you arrive — how Ternpath is redesigning the way people meet

Most apps get you to the door. Ternpath gets you ready to walk through it.

Here’s what we mean by that.

The most anxious moment of any social event isn’t during it. It’s before. The drive there. The walk from the car. That specific feeling of not knowing what you’re walking into, whether you’ll know anyone, whether you’ll have anything to say.

Most social apps do nothing about that moment. You sign up, you get accepted to an event, and then you’re on your own until you show up.

Ternpath is different. And it’s different on purpose.

The group chat that changes everything

When you’re accepted to a Ternpath event, you’re added to a group chat with every other attendee before the event takes place.

Not after. Before.

That might sound like a small thing. It isn’t. It’s the difference between walking into a room full of strangers and walking into a room full of people you’ve already started a conversation with.

By the time you arrive, you already know who’s coming. You’ve already broken the ice. You’ve sorted the practical details — where to park, what to wear, whether the venue has changed. And somewhere in that conversation, without anyone trying, something has already begun.

That’s belonging before you arrive. And it’s one of the things that makes Ternpath genuinely different from everything else out there.

Why this matters more than it looks

The research on friendship formation is consistent on one point: the hardest part isn’t sustaining a friendship, it’s starting one. That first conversation. That moment of deciding whether to go deeper or stay surface level.

Everything that reduces the friction of that first moment increases the likelihood that something real forms from it.

The group chat does that. It takes the cold start out of the equation. By the time two people meet face to face at a Ternpath event, they’re not strangers. They’re people who’ve already chosen to show up for the same thing — and who’ve already said hello.

That’s not a feature. That’s a philosophy.

AI in the background. Authenticity in the foreground.

Ternpath uses AI to make the matching smarter — connecting you with events and people that genuinely fit your interests, not just your postcode. But the AI is never the experience. It’s the engine running quietly underneath.

The experience is human. It always has been. A group of people who share something real, in a space small enough to matter, with enough common ground to start.

The app gets you there. The group chat warms you up. And then you walk through the door already belonging.

That’s what we’re building. And we think it’s worth building.

Ternpath is a belonging app — built for real life. Find out more at ternpath.com

7 April 2026

What does it mean to truly belong somewhere? And can an app help you get there?

Belonging is one of those things that’s easier to feel than to define.

You know it when you walk into a room and immediately relax. When the conversation flows without effort. When you leave and realise you weren’t performing or managing impressions — you were just yourself, and that was enough.

You also know its absence. That particular flatness of being around people but not quite with them. Present but not included. Visible but not known.

Most of us have felt both. And most of us, if we’re honest, want more of the first and less of the second.

What belonging actually is

Psychologists who study this describe belonging as one of the most fundamental human needs — sitting alongside food, shelter and safety in terms of what we require to function well. Not a luxury. Not a nice-to-have. A need.

It’s distinct from simply being around people. You can be in a crowded room and feel completely alone. You can be sitting with one other person and feel completely at home.

The difference isn’t numbers. It’s fit. It’s the sense that these people, this place, this moment — this is where I’m supposed to be.

Why it’s harder to find than it should be

Modern life has quietly dismantled most of the structures that used to create belonging almost automatically.

Stable neighbourhoods where you knew everyone on your street. Workplaces where people stayed long enough to become genuinely close. Community institutions — churches, clubs, local organisations — that put the same people in the same room week after week for years.

Most of those structures have weakened or disappeared entirely. What replaced them — social media, digital communities, online everything — gave us reach without roots. You can be connected to people on every continent and still not have a single person you’d call at 10pm if something went wrong.

That’s not a failure of character. That’s a structural gap. And it’s one that a lot of people are quietly navigating right now.

So can an app actually help?

It’s a fair question. And it deserves an honest answer.

An app can’t manufacture belonging. No technology can. Belonging happens between people — in real moments, in real places, through the slow accumulation of shared experience and mutual trust. Nobody codes that.

But here’s what technology can do: it can remove the friction that stops belonging from forming in the first place.

It can find the people who share your interests when you have no way of finding them yourself. It can create the context for a first meeting that isn’t cold and awkward. It can put you in a small enough group that you’re not invisible. It can give you a reason to show up that goes beyond just wanting to meet people.

None of that is belonging. But all of it is the soil belonging needs.

As I often say about Ternpath: “It doesn’t erode from the authentic experience we aim our users to have. It simply enables us to find them great experiences.”

That’s the honest version of what a belonging app can do. Not replace the human part. Enable it.

What Ternpath is actually building

Ternpath is built on one conviction: that the conditions for belonging can be engineered, even if belonging itself cannot.

Small events — capped at fifteen people — built around interests you actually have. A group chat before you arrive so the first conversation isn’t cold. And then you show up, face to face, at the same place, with people you already have something in common with.

The app gets you there. What happens next is entirely human.

That’s what a belonging app looks like. Not an algorithm pretending to be your friend. A platform that respects the process — and gets out of the way when it matters.

“Why belonging is the antidote to loneliness — and how to find it”

There’s a word we don’t use enough.

Not connection. Not networking. Not even friendship — though friendship is part of it.

Belonging.

That specific feeling of being somewhere and knowing you’re supposed to be there. That the people around you are your people. That you don’t have to explain yourself or perform or wonder if you’re welcome.

Most of us know what it feels like. And most of us, if we’re honest, don’t have enough of it.

The difference between connection and belonging

We live in the most connected era in human history. More ways to reach people, more platforms, more followers, more notifications than any generation before us.

And yet.

The research on loneliness and social disconnection keeps pointing in the same direction. More connection, but less belonging. More contact, but less depth. More people in our feeds, fewer in our lives.

The difference matters. Connection is surface. Belonging is weight. Connection is knowing someone’s name. Belonging is knowing they’d show up.

You can be connected to thousands of people and still feel like you don’t quite belong anywhere. Most people in 2026 know exactly what that feels like — even if they’d never say it out loud.

Why belonging is harder to find than it looks

Belonging isn’t something you can manufacture through sheer force of social activity. Joining more groups, attending more events, downloading more apps — none of that guarantees it. Sometimes it helps. Often it just exhausts you.

Belonging happens when three things align: you’re with people who share something real with you, you’re in an environment where it’s okay to be human, and there’s enough repetition that trust has time to form.

Strip any one of those three things out and you’re left with acquaintances. Which are fine. But they’re not what we’re talking about.

The reason belonging feels rare isn’t because the right people don’t exist. They do — statistically, definitely, in whatever city you’re in right now. The reason it feels rare is that the conditions for it to form are increasingly hard to stumble into by accident.

What belonging actually requires

It requires smallness. Not a crowd, not a conference, not a massive social event where you circulate and collect names. A small group. Intimate enough that you’re not invisible. Big enough that the conversation can go somewhere unexpected.

It requires a shared reason to be there that isn’t just the desire to meet people. Shared interests — things you actually care about, not things that sound good on a profile — create the context where belonging can quietly form in the background while you’re focused on something else.

And it requires showing up in person. Not a DM. Not a voice note. Not a reaction to a story. A physical presence in a physical place, with people who chose to be there too.

That combination — small group, shared interests, face to face — doesn’t guarantee belonging. Nothing does. But it creates the soil. And belonging, when it finds the right soil, tends to grow.

This is what Ternpath is built for

Not to simulate belonging. Not to manufacture it algorithmically. But to create the conditions where it can happen naturally — between real people, at real events, in the real world.

Small groups. Interests you actually have. A place to show up.

The belonging was always possible. We’re just making it easier to find.

Ternpath is a belonging app — built for real life. Find out more at ternpath.com

30 March 2026

I moved to a new city and knew nobody. Here’s what actually worked.

You packed your life into boxes, drove or flew to somewhere new, and told yourself it would be fine. You’re an adult. You’re capable. You’ve done hard things before.

And then you got there.

And it was fine. Technically. You found a place to live, figured out the commute, learned which supermarket was closest. The practical stuff sorted itself out the way it always does.

But the other stuff — the people stuff — that was different.

Nobody tells you how loud the silence gets when you don’t know a single person in a city of millions. Not dangerous loud. Just… present. A low hum underneath everything that reminds you, at the end of every day, that you’re starting from zero.

The obvious solutions don’t work

So you try the obvious things.

You download a couple of apps. You join a Facebook group for people new to the city. You sign up for a class — yoga, maybe, or a running group — because someone told you that’s how you meet people.

And you do meet people. Sort of. You exchange names, maybe numbers. But somewhere between that first conversation and an actual friendship, something stalls. The yoga class ends. The Facebook group is full of people asking about parking and skip bin hire. The running group is friendly but everyone already has their people.

The problem isn’t you. The problem is that none of these things were actually designed to create friendship. They were designed to put people in the same space. Friendship is supposed to just happen from there.

Sometimes it does. Mostly it doesn’t.

What actually works

Here’s what the research says — and what most people who’ve successfully built a social life in a new city will tell you if you ask them directly:

It takes repetition. It takes a small enough group that you’re not anonymous. And it takes a shared reason to be there that goes beyond just wanting to meet people.

That last one is the key that most people miss. Walking into a room full of strangers who are all there to make friends is exhausting and awkward because the intention is too naked. There’s nowhere to put your attention except on each other, and that’s too much pressure too soon.

But walking into a room full of strangers who are all there because they love craft beer, or hiking, or a particular kind of food — suddenly you have something to talk about that isn’t the fact that you’re all lonely. The friendship forms in the background, while you’re focused on something else.

That’s not a hack. That’s just how human beings work.

The city isn’t the problem

One more thing worth saying: the city isn’t withholding connection from you. It’s not cold or unfriendly. It’s just big. And big means the right people for you are out there — statistically, definitely — but finding them through sheer chance takes longer than most people are prepared to wait.

What shortens the gap is finding a way to filter for the things that matter to you — your actual interests, the things you’d do on a weekend anyway — and getting into rooms with people who share them. Small rooms. Repeated exposure. Low pressure.

That combination doesn’t guarantee friendship. Nothing does. But it creates the conditions where friendship becomes possible. And in a new city, that’s exactly what’s missing.

That’s what Ternpath is built for

Small events, built around real interests, with enough people to make it interesting and few enough that you’re not invisible. A way to connect with your fellow attendees before you show up, so the first conversation isn’t cold.

And then you show up. Face to face, at the same place, with people you already have something in common with.

It won’t feel like making friends. It’ll just feel like a good night out. And sometimes — not always, but sometimes — that’s exactly how it starts.

Ternpath is an app built around real friendships. Find out more at ternpath.com

24 March 2026
Why making friends as an adult is genuinely hard — and it’s not your fault

Nobody warns you about this part.

You get through school, maybe university, maybe a career that moves you around a few times — and somewhere along the way, the friends just… stop appearing. Not dramatically. Not all at once. You just look up one day and realise the last genuinely new friendship you formed was years ago, and you can’t quite remember how it happened or why it stopped.

You’re not antisocial. You’re not broken. You’re just an adult.

Here’s the thing nobody says out loud: making friends as an adult is structurally hard. It’s not a character flaw. It’s not shyness. It’s not because you’re too busy or too boring or too set in your ways. It’s because the conditions that naturally produce friendship — repeated contact, low stakes, shared experience — basically disappear after your mid-twenties, and nobody replaces them with anything.

What actually creates friendship

Researchers who study this stuff point to three ingredients that have to exist simultaneously for a friendship to form: proximity, repetition, and an environment where your guard is down enough to let someone in.

School gives you all three without asking. You sit next to the same people every day, for years, in a context where vulnerability is basically compulsory because you’re all equally lost. Friendships form almost by accident.

Work gives you proximity and repetition but usually not the third thing. Most workplaces aren’t environments where you drop your guard — they’re environments where you perform competence. The friendships that do form at work tend to happen despite the environment, not because of it.

After that? You’re on your own. And the default tools available — social media, dating apps retrofitted for “friendship,” large impersonal events where you stand around with a drink hoping someone talks to you — replace exactly none of those three ingredients.

The loneliness nobody admits to

I’ve spoken to a lot of people about this. Men especially — though not only men — carry this quietly. There’s a specific kind of loneliness that comes not from being alone, but from being surrounded by people and still feeling like nobody really knows you. Acquaintances everywhere. Friends nowhere.

It’s more common than anyone admits, because admitting it feels like failure. Like you should have figured this out by now.

You haven’t failed. The system just wasn’t designed for this stage of life.

Why I built Ternpath

I spent years working jobs that moved me around — policing, television, more policing — and I watched this pattern play out over and over. Smart, decent, interesting people who’d somehow ended up socially isolated not because they were difficult to know, but because the opportunity to know them never quite arrived.

Ternpath exists because I believe that opportunity can be engineered. Small groups. Shared interests. Real events. Real rooms. And a simple mechanic that means every friendship formed on the platform is verified — you met this person. In the flesh. That’s not a feature. That’s the whole point.

The research backs it up and so does every conversation I’ve had with someone who finally found their people in their thirties, forties, or fifties: it happened because they were put in a room with the right people, repeatedly, in a context where it was okay to just be human.

That’s what we’re building.

So if you’re reading this feeling like you should have more people in your life by now —

You’re not behind. You’re not failing. You’re navigating something genuinely difficult without the tools you actually need.

That’s what we’re trying to fix.