How did we start?

So basically, Mateus and I have been friends for a really long time. We both studied Computer Science, and I was always pitching him new ideas for things we could start together. He was brutally honest - usually telling me how bad most of my ideas were.

Then one day, I called him about an idea called FOMO. To my surprise, he was immediately interested. That was a great sign for me because he had turned down every other idea I'd brought up before.

We started going back and forth about what the app should be, but we already had a clear mission in mind:

"Redefine how people discover the best places around them."

From the start, we knew we wanted to democratize information about local places. Our platform would be by the people, for the people. We wanted everyone to easily find the best spots - whether that's a cozy café with great iced lattes, a buzzing restaurant, or the most happening place in town.

We began with the design phase, and that's where I really let my imagination run wild. At first, we thought we were amazing designers and that we were building a perfect platform. I'll share something that's been sitting in our Figma since day one but was never shown publicly.

First version of Feed, Hotspots, and Profile

It wasn't used - for obvious reasons - but it helped pave the way for what eventually became FOMO.

As we started mapping out what kind of development we'd need, we realized we needed a third co-founder. That's when Vasco joined the team, and the three of us officially came together to start FOMO.

Soon, we realized my original design wasn't good enough to really catch people's attention. That's when we reached out to our friend Inês, a super talented UI/UX designer working in London. She already had great experience, so she helped us get our feet off the ground. She took our "below-par" design and transformed it into the foundation of what FOMO looks like today.

We started coding everything - frontend to backend — and before long, we had a working version of FOMO. That's when we decided to release it.

But then came the big question:

How the heck do we get people to install and post?

We started small — word of mouth. That got us around 300 users, which felt amazing at first. But then we hit a wall. Growth slowed down, and honestly, we didn't know what to do next.

That's when we realized we needed someone with a marketing mindset. We started talking to a few agencies, and before long we met Lourenço. This guy could come up with copy faster than ChatGPT, was a bit crazy (in a good way), and immediately got what we were trying to do. He believed in us and decided to jump onboard.

Together, we tried pretty much everything — posters, flyers, Instagram posts — anything we could think of to get FOMO out there. That got us to around 600 users. It felt good, but we knew it still wasn't enough. So, we started reaching out to newspapers, magazines, and whoever would listen.

That's when things finally started to move. We went from 600 to 1,366 users in just one week. For us, that was huge. We'd never seen growth like that before — and yeah, it was exciting. I found myself checking the dashboard every five minutes to see if someone new had joined.

But we're still far from where we want to be. We know growth isn't going to come easy — and that's okay. We're learning, experimenting, and trying to figure things out one step at a time. What keeps us going is seeing even a few people enjoying what we've built.

We're still stuck with the same big question — just tackling it in new ways every day:

How do we get people to install and post?