Neighborhood discovery for people who are tired of being algorithmically sorted into loneliness.
Every major social platform optimizes for global reach and engagement time. Nobody optimizes for the 100 people who live within a mile of you.
The result: people are more connected to strangers in other states than to neighbors who share their exact interests, walk the same streets, and buy coffee at the same place every morning.
Stoop fixes that.
Stoop is a video-first, hyperlocal social app built around fandom-level interest matching within proximity bands. It shows you the closest 100 people who care about the things you care about — not 100,000 people across the country who share a surface-level interest.
- Closest 100 Feed — Your world is the 100 people physically closest to you who match your interest profile
- Fandom-level interest taxonomy — Not "interested in music." Interested in lo-fi hip hop, 90s R&B, and cumbia. That specificity matters.
- Horizontal scroll — Content moves the way attention moves
- Age-cohort filter — Optional, but the app knows that a 45-year-old and a 22-year-old matching on "CrossFit" probably want different things
- No DMs. No groups. No events. — These features exist everywhere. We're not building them.
- Video-first — Show, don't tell. Your neighborhood in motion.
Social anxiety doesn't come from too little connection — it comes from the wrong kind. Stoop is not building:
- Mass-broadcast features
- Algorithmic feed manipulation
- Engagement-maximizing dark patterns
- A platform that profits from loneliness
Padres CC palette: Primary pink · Teal · Yellow
Because San Diego had a moment and we're keeping it.
Phase 1: Montrose, Houston
Neighborhood-first. Not campus-first. Not city-wide. One neighborhood, full penetration.
Montrose is the right starting neighborhood: dense, walkable, culturally diverse, high tolerance for new social products, strong local identity. If Stoop works in Montrose, it works everywhere.
| Milestone | Status |
|---|---|
| Concept development | ✅ Complete |
| Pitch deck (v8) | ✅ Complete |
| AI focus group rounds | ✅ 2 completed |
| Logo design | 🔄 Needs professional designer |
| MVP development | 📋 Planned |
| Montrose GTM launch | 📋 Planned |
Two rounds of AI-simulated focus group testing completed. Findings validated core mechanics and identified key UX friction points in onboarding and interest taxonomy depth.
Ryan S. Lester · RL Perspectives, LLC · Houston, TX
Veteran-owned. Houston-based. Built by someone who moved to a new city and wanted to meet his neighbors without downloading seven apps and attending events he didn't care about.
If you're a designer, engineer, or investor who wants to talk — reach out.