One Friday evening, Alyx van der Vorm found herself alone again, contemplating another night at the gym. She kept thinking, “I should do something with someone.” But she realized that making plans had become incredibly difficult. Figuring out who was available, sending texts, waiting for replies, and researching options felt like a monumental task. She noted that staying home to watch a movie required just one tap, but seeing a friend felt like ten steps.
At 25, van der Vorm is part of Generation Z, a demographic that is overly connected yet often reports feeling isolated and lonely. She studied computational neuroscience at Harvard University and later worked in a lab researching how social connections impact mental and physical health. She stated that the data is stark, showing that isolation can be as physically damaging as things we universally agree are bad for us. This gave her the confidence that working on friendship is not a soft issue but a real health problem.
So in 2020, van der Vorm started working on Clyx, a social platform designed to help users find community events to join. Five years later, the app has 50,000 active users buying tickets for events and more than 200,000 users browsing events. The company has now raised $14 million in a Series A funding round led by Blitzscaling Ventures. Other investors include Iqram Magdon-Ismail, the co-founder of Venmo, and former F1 driver turned investor Nico Rosberg.
Clyx is quite simple. It pulls event data from sites like Ticketmaster and TikTok and shows users events in their cities that they can sign up for. It offers suggestions for places to try, and users can upload their contacts to see which events their friends are attending. The company has also built a compatibility engine that recommends people users can connect with at events. This means instead of walking into a room of strangers, a user might know that Thomas shares their interests and they should connect.
The app nudges people to connect and reconnect, which van der Vorm says removes the awkward burden of reaching out cold. It also alleviates what some might perceive as the tedious task of nurturing a new friendship. Clyx has a feature called Programs, which is essentially a series of events that leads people to hang out with the same group during workshop sessions. That repetition is where acquaintances turn into real friends, and it has been one of the most exciting features the company has rolled out.
Van der Vorm explained that people do have friends, but what they lack are friends who are nearby, free at the same time, and up for the same activities. Clyx removes the planning tax and nudges users toward the right next step so the momentum does not die after saying “we should hang soon.”
Van der Vorm met her lead investors through personal connections, including a chance meeting with a stranger at a coffee shop who connected her with an investor friend. She met Magdon-Ismail after someone heard her give a talk at the Harvard Club and thought the two should meet. She described these encounters as being in the right place at the right time. She also mentioned meeting Simon Sinek after someone heard her speak about friendship, said she sounded just like him, and made the introduction.
Clyx is currently operating only in Miami and London. Van der Vorm aims to launch the app in New York this month and in Sao Paulo later this year. The company is also investing heavily in product development, brand and cultural partnerships, and expanding its team.
Clyx is not the first app to try to help people get outside and meet new people. Posh, Meetup, Dice, and Eventbrite have done that for years. Bumble has an option to look for friends, and even Hinge is trying to get people to go out more. But van der Vorm hopes Clyx can stand out. Her dream is to create a world where it is just as easy to go out and spend time with your friends as it is to sit home and scroll. If that helps people feel happier, healthier, and like they truly belong somewhere, that is the impact she wants Clyx to have.