Just stop working on this idea.

The main problem, imho, with the current model of startup creation, is that it heavily selects for young technical people with little in the way of other commitments to take chances on new ideas. Many young technical people are hard-working and driven and that's wonderful, but (1) they form a narrow demographic [if you hang out at too many hacker cons you'll wildly overestimate the popularity of crummy cable sci-fi shows, for instance] (2) they have very little exposure to meaningful problems, so we end up with hundreds of meal delivery and laundry startup, because what else troubles a recent college engineering grad?

I have seen hundreds of apps like yours. It's a terrible space. First of all, literally every social app in the world is designed to help people make friends. That's how friends are generally made: people have something in common like "takes the same bus to school", "works at the same company", or "comments on the same warhammer 40k miniatures painting advice forum", they get to know each other, things grow from there.

I posit that "Make a New Group of Close Friends in Your Neighborhood" is not actually a value proposition that you can deliver on, even with perfect execution and infinite engineering resources. I just don't believe it. But clearly you do, so let's put that aside and I'll grant you that this technology could exist and you implement it perfectly.

How many times in someone's life could you imagine them using this? How many close friends in their neighborhood can anyone really maintain? Once? Twice? Maybe three times if they move a lot? Let's say it's six total times. And let's also posit that, against all odds, it always works, there's always the right mix of people in a given neighborhood to make this always work.

What are you going to do? Charge for the six uses? Show ads six times? GEICO has ads on TV all the time because even though you basically never change car insurance, they need to be top-of-mind when you think of who to google. I think your cost of customer acquisition, given the idea that your technology works indistinguishably from magic, will be ludicrous. Remember, there's no reason for people to even tell their friends about this: its an app for people with no friends. I think you will have to spend a fortune continually acquiring users.

Then, what's your arpu over the customer's lifetime? I can't imagine how you can charge for this. Ads? Some sort of affiliate marketing? I would think, if your product worked, the total user engagement with the site over the entire lifetime of the customer would be on the order of what, an hour? There's just no place to make money here.

Personally, I also think this is not a real problem, customers do not exist for this service, etc. but you know, I'll spot you that, along with the idea that if it was a problem, you could fix it. _Even if those things are true_, you are going to end up with a horrendous business. See also: every "helps friends figure out who's down to hang out" startup, every "helps organize your travel plans" startup, every "uber for X" where X is something you buy like four times in your life startup.

There is something about the founder mindset that is drawn to this bad idea, just like founders are drawn to build "like making apps, but easier!" startups over and over again that essentially never work (maybe Hypercard?).

I read an autobiography once by a former Navy SEAL. He said the first thing he does when any young kid tells him he wants to join the SEALs is spend an hour or so telling the kid why being a SEAL sucks and why he'll never make it. He said 99% of the time, the kids give up on the idea. He said it's nothing personal, he usually barely knows the kids, it's just that if someone you barely know can talk you out of even trying to join the SEALs in an hour, there's no fucking chance you'll survive BUD/S and all that stuff, so he's really just saving them a bunch of time. He's doing his own "pre-BUD/S" screening that's a lot cheaper and easier for everyone, and that involves a lot less heartache. I always felt like that was a pretty good idea.