A platform for getting people
off their phone and into their city.
UnlockTrails gives Gen Z users a structured, social way to experience their city, guided by creators they trust, with stops that flow into an intentional day or evening.
The core interaction is simple: a creator builds a trail, users discover it by location or vibe, join free or paid, then move stop-to-stop through a real-world experience with check-ins, media capture, and social completion.
"A trail is not just a route. It's a designed experience with pacing, anticipation, payoff, and a reason to do it with other people."
The concept was clear.
The core loops were not.
This was a genuine 0→1 product build around a sharp social thesis: people consume content about their city, but very few platforms help them experience the city itself in a structured, social way.
When I joined, the foundation existed, but the validation-ready product did not. Key loops were incomplete and the platform was not ready to test real behavior in the field.
Coffee to music to activity to brunch. Not an event — a designed experience.
From swiping
to showing up.
2026's defining consumer-social trend is the shift from swiping to showing up — TechCrunch, Tinder, and Bumble have all publicly pivoted toward IRL. "Meeting new people is becoming a product category, not a side feature." The demand is real; the formats are still being invented. Every competitor offers a single-point experience. Nobody offers a sequenced journey.
Swipe to compare →
| Criteria | Timeleft | Partiful | Meetup | Fever | 222 | UnlockTrails ↗ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Core model | Dinner with 5 matched strangers | Party-planning tool | Interest-based groups | Curated experience tickets | AI-matched group meetups | Multi-stop curated trails |
| Scale | 3M+ users, 200+ cities | Gen Z viral, App Store Award finalist 2024 | 2+ decades, most cities | Global, experience marketplace | iOS-only, single-city | Field-testing, LA |
| Strength | Speed to real connection, matching | Viral Gen Z brand, expressive invites | Scale, breadth, established | Curated experiences, ticketing | Curated serendipity, vetting | Sequenced journey format |
| Key gap | Single format (dinners only) | Planning tool, not discovery/experience | Dated UX, older demographic | Transactional, not social/community | Closed, exclusive, single-city | Early-stage, building density |
| Structure | One event | One event | One group | One event | One event | Journey: coffee → music → activity → brunch |
| Social loop | Match → dine | Invite → RSVP | Join → attend | Buy → attend | Match → meet | Discover → Join → Experience → Share |
| Audience | Millennials + Gen Z | Gen Z | Mixed / older | Mixed | Urban Gen Z | US Gen Z |
| Monetization | Subscription | Free (monetizing) | Group fees | Ticket margin | $22.22 curation fee | Entry fee + experience margin |
I wasn't just designing screens.
I was shaping the product strategy.
"This is a very strong full-product view. It's clear you've thought through not just the build, but the sequencing, dependencies, and what it would actually take to get something into the App Store in a real way."
A trail is physical.
The app has to support it without hijacking it.
The hardest design decision was the physical-to-digital handoff. This is not a couch app. It's something users glance at while walking, coordinating with friends, checking in at a stop, or moving through a real place with patchy connectivity.
The UX had to be glanceable, anticipatory, low-friction, and resilient outdoors. It needed to build momentum without spoiling the next stop, and make check-in feel natural instead of transactional.
The trail itself is the product.
The app is the delivery layer.
One direction-setting insight changed the entire prioritisation: each trail had to be treated like its own designed product. Real locations, real sequence, real timing, real imagery, real social energy.
That shifted the focus from generic UI polish to trail architecture. Every screen had to behave like a teaser for what was next, not a dump of route data. The value was the experience design of the trail itself.
