u/Aggressive-Crab4615

Me and my co-founder are two students in Sydney building a rave group finding app. Core problem we're solving : a lot of people want to go to raves, festivals and club nights but their friends bail, they're new to the city, or they just don't have a crew yet. They end up either going alone and feeling isolated or not going at all.

We're positioning it as event-first social matching : you select an event you're attending, then get matched with other people going to the same event. You can find rave friends, a crew, or a rave bae depending on what you're looking for. Think less Tinder, more 'never go alone.'

We just launched a waitlist and have been doing manual matching experiments before building anything. Closest competitor is Radiate which exists but has minimal Australian traction and weak event-specific matching.

Brutally honest feedback welcome. What's most likely to kill this? What are we missing? Has anyone tried building something similar?

Anyone else feel like Sydney has an amazing music and festival scene but it's hard to break into if you don't already have a crew?

Not talking about huge festivals where you can easily meet people — more like specific club nights or smaller raves where showing up completely alone feels weird. Do you just do it anyway? Have you ever successfully found people to go with online beforehand? What platforms actually work for this?

EDIT: Really appreciate all the replies here. For context, I originally asked because my flatmate and I are exploring an early app idea around helping newer ravers and people without a crew find others going to the same events. The replies have been genuinely useful — especially seeing how many experienced people are comfortable going solo. I shared a bit more context in the comments but didn't want to turn the post into a promo. If you're curious or know someone who fits that description more than you do, we are making a waitlist.