Why I built Squado.

Four months, and nobody to play with.

I have always been an active person. Sport, chess, a long evening of video games with friends: the shape changes, the point does not. Doing something alongside someone is how I have made almost every friend I have.

Last year I travelled alone for four months. It taught me how hard it is to meet people once you are past school, past university, past the age where friendship simply happens to you. Every tool on offer was a version of the same thing: a swipe, a match, then small talk with a stranger you have no reason to trust yet, carried entirely by you. It felt awkward every single time. I do not think that is a personal failing. I think the format is wrong.

Sport is the excuse. That is the whole trick.

A game gives you something to do with your hands and your attention. You can talk, or you can not talk, and either way you have spent a good hour with someone. Nobody has to perform.

By the end you know something real about a person, which is more than an afternoon of messaging will ever tell you: whether they turn up, whether they are generous with the ball, whether they are good company when they lose.

Two people, one app.

Some people come to Squado to make friends. Some just need a fourth for padel on Thursday and want nothing more than that. Squado does not ask anyone to declare which, and it does not treat one as the real reason and the other as a pretext. Both are how it actually works, often in the same person on different weeks.

The hardest version is arriving somewhere new.

Finding people who like the things you like is not a matter of effort. It is a matter of access, and a newcomer has none. Most social platforms are built for broadcasting to a wide audience. This one is built for the smaller and more useful job: putting a specific plan in front of specific people, so that a free evening becomes a game with a time, a place, and names attached.

What I would count as success.

Not downloads. Someone plays a game this week they would otherwise have skipped, and walks off the court having met a person they did not know that morning. That is the entire measure, and it happens one person at a time.

I am also building it because I want it. I have sports I like and friends who are not always free, and I would rather play than wait.