Fifteen years ago, when the first social networking platforms were really picking up steam, they were still built with real-world connections in mind. They encouraged you to link profiles with the people around you–at school, or in your social scene.

Venn is stepping-up our mission to help people make meaningful, real-world connections. We’re finally ready to share something that I only wish I had when I was first dropped from a commune into the big city… I should probably explain that part: I was raised on a literal commune.

More to the point, I was raised on a kibbutz in Israel: an agricultural commune that felt like a small town mixed with a farm, with a huge focus on community. And that was at the core of how I was raised: We did everything together. I knew the names and daily struggles and triumphs of all my neighbors, and they could say the same for me. From work to play, we did it for each other as much as ourselves. 

When I moved to the Shapira neighborhood of Tel Aviv (think Brooklyn, but in Israel), I figured I had all the tools we’d need to thrive in the big city. How hard could it be to make friends and feel at home in a new place surrounded by people just like me?

Turns out: pretty hard.

It was easier than ever to have an algorithm-driven app connect me with strangers halfway across the world, or a new meme, or any other countless ways to distract myself from the world around me. But none of that helped me feel like I was a part of my apartment building, my block, or my community. Nothing existed to help me build friendships with my neighbors down the street, people who were feeling as isolated as I was, regardless of likes and followers.

Well, I could lead by example. So I, along with two friends, started Venn. We worked together to build tools that helped people connect and support each other like I’ve always believed we were meant to. We’ve built communal spaces in Brooklyn, Berlin, and Tel Aviv. We went from feeling like strangers in Shapira to creating the spaces, moments and real-life networks that allowed a true sense of neighborhood to thrive.

We learned a lot of lessons from launching Venn, and even more lessons during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. We have all seen, firsthand, how much we take for granted the already-diminished social contact we were able to freely enjoy before. We can look back to a year ago and feel the difference a lack of community makes. We know we need each other. Just like my first days in Shapira. The question now is, how?

That’s where Venn’s latest effort comes in…  

For our members and neighbors, the new Venn app brings the same principles we developed in-person and across the globe and allows them to be applied anywhere. Whether you want to meet your neighbors, or connect with a live community manager or local business, we want to empower everyone to build the kind of social, civic and economic bonds that define a neighborhood. We’re all living in among unfound friends who, if given the right tools, can turn the place we live into the place we call home.

For our partners, the new Venn app is the single touchpoint that powers our Neighborhood Engagement Platform. By providing Services (both through the Venn app and the Vini Neighborhood concierge), we’ll help link communities to the things they need to grow. By linking virtual and physical Spaces, we can create meaningful opportunities for people to connect. And by giving them things to do and share–together and apart–our Programming helps them engage outward into the world instead of inward toward their phone.

Community and purpose are universal needs that we’ve let fall to the wayside while we chase virtual versions of the same thing. I hope the new Venn App will be a useful tool that helps everyone build the neighborhood they want, together.