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River powers in-person connection for communities, brands, and creators—through curated dinners, meetups, and more.
We started by accident.
In 2023, Rae & Ana spun up two simple fan meetups for Episode 100 of The All-In Podcast. What began as an experiment quickly scaled to 7,000+ members across 50 cities, and we realized something powerful: people were hungry for connection, and no one had built the infrastructure to meet that demand.
With backing from Jason Calacanis and Balaji Srinivasan, we set out to build River—a platform designed to make IRL community scalable, brand-safe, and effortless.
We launched our MVP on August 8, 2023, hosting 20 grassroots events around the All-In Summit. By fall, we were powering communities for Bryan Johnson, My First Million, This Week in Startups, Tim Ferriss, and more.
In 2024 we raised a pre-seed round and began exploring a second layer to River: curated, paid dinners powered by AI matchmaking and white labeled for creators. Now communities don’t just gather—they connect deeply in small groups, over shared meals, coffee, or conversation.
Today, River does two things:
→ Dinners — small, curated, paid experiences matched by AI
→ Meetups — community-led, open-invite events
Everything is white-labeled. No event ops required. Just real people, meeting in real life—powered by your brand, and River.
Our investors
Balaji Srinivasan / The Network State
Ben Horvath and Wolfgang Männel / Blockchain Founders Capital
Bertie Highmore & Jai Taylor / Bluewire Capital
Jan Baeriswyl / Very Early Ventures
Rajeevan Rajendran, Damien Roch, & Dominic Briggs / Blockwall
