A Friendship App for Relating, Not Reacting
For the three, four or five close friends you already have. One weekly reflection, answered privately, revealed together. Five minutes a week. The rest of the internet can wait.
Social media isn't the villain. Endless scrolling is.
Instagram lets you see your cousin's baby. TikTok makes you laugh on a Tuesday night. The group chat with your brothers is probably the most connected part of your week. These apps do a lot of good and pretending otherwise would be dishonest.
What breaks friendship isn't that these apps exist. It's that most of them are engineered to keep you scrolling, which means they're optimized for your attention rather than your relationships. You finish an hour on the feed and you've seen everyone, but you haven't actually heard from anyone.
Seeing a friend's story and knowing how your friend is doing are not the same thing. One is a wave. The other is a conversation.
Friendship doesn't need more content. It needs a little time where the point is each other.
A weekly reflection for your small circle.
Runde is an app for close friends. A small circle of people who already know you, an everyday room to talk in and one thing a week the whole circle answers together. There is no network to grow, no feed to scroll, no audience to perform for.
Everyone writes their answer privately first, so no one's response is shaped by seeing someone else's. When the last person is done, the answers reveal together. That's usually where the real conversation begins.
The app is designed to be opened once or twice a week and then closed. The whole point is that it doesn't want your attention. It wants your honesty, for five minutes, about something that matters.
Relating, not reacting. The app opens once and the friendship is what's left behind.
One prompt, every week
Arrives on the same day. No pinging between sessions.
Small circle, capped at eight
Two to eight friends. Past that, real conversation fragments.
Private by design
No ads, no data mining. Turn on end-to-end encryption when you create a Private circle.
No feeds, no likes, no streaks
Built to close, not to capture attention.
Three things happen every week. That's the whole app.
Start a small circle
Invite two to eight of the people you already want to stay close to. Old friends, siblings, the group from your first job. No strangers, no algorithms.
Answer one prompt a week
Arrives on the same day, every week. A few minutes to answer. Your response stays private until everyone else has written theirs.
Reveal together
Everyone's answers unlock at once. The conversation goes wherever it goes. The next prompt arrives next week either way.
What it actually looks like
Six screens from the app. They rotate every few seconds. Tap a label to jump.
Home
Every circle you're in and the week's question in each. No feed, no follower count, no algorithm. Just the rooms you've chosen to spend time in.
Answer first
You write your answer before you can read anyone else's. The rest of the conversation unlocks once you've shared. No groupthink, no piggybacking.
The reveal
Then everyone's answers open up and the conversation carries on from there for the rest of the week.
Inside a circle
Two to eight people, each circle with its own settings: how deep the questions go, what can land and how often. What's said in one circle stays in that circle.
Your rhythm
A quiet look back at the circle: how long you have been at it, the weeks you showed up and every question you have answered together.
Starters
Something to answer, something to show, something to go and do. The prompts ship inside the app, so there is always one ready, even offline.
Close friendships are quietly disappearing.
Dutch sociologist Gerald Mollenhorst found that over seven years, people lose touch with half of their closest friends. Not from fights. From drift.
The number of American adults with zero close friends has quadrupled since 1990. The US Surgeon General has called loneliness a public health crisis on par with smoking.
The friendships that survive share one quiet trait: someone kept a rhythm going. A standing call, a Sunday walk, a weekly anything. The ritual carries the friendship when life is noisy.
Runde is that ritual for the circle you already have.
Honest answers, no sales pitch
How is this different from Instagram, BeReal or Snapchat? +
Isn't this just another group chat? +
Why once a week instead of every day? +
What kind of questions show up? +
Do I have to open up to use it? +
Is it really private? +
How big should the circle be? +
Does it replace texting my friends? +
Friendship doesn't really need another app. It needs a little structure in a life that keeps getting busier. Five minutes a week, with the people who matter, about something that matters. That part is worth building for.
Start your first circle today
Available on iOS and Android. Download now and invite your closest people to join your first circle.
Free to download. Start with the free plan, upgrade anytime.