Circles
My own product: a private, ad-free social app for the people who actually know you. Designed, built, and owned end to end.
Visit meetcircles.app ↗Circles is the social network for the people who actually know you. It's not a client project. It's my own product, built because I believed the world needs a social app that treats people as people. No algorithms, no follower counts, no ads: just a small, private space where your real life is welcome exactly as it is. Everything you share reaches your circle, and only your circle.
Mainstream social media stopped connecting people and started monetising attention, burying meaningful moments beneath influencers, brands, and engagement-optimised feeds. I wanted to build the opposite: a calm, invite-only app with a chronological feed, private-by-default profiles, and no metrics to perform for. Doing that well means getting the product, the trust model, and the engineering all right, with no investor pressure or growth targets pulling decisions away from users.
I own Circles top to bottom: product vision, design, and engineering. I built the mobile app in React Native for iOS and Android, with a privacy-first architecture where content is stored only for the circle it was shared with and nothing is sold or tracked. I shaped the whole experience around intentional, human connection: personal invite codes, a chronological feed with no ranking, and profiles invisible to outsiders. I fund and run the product entirely, so it can stay free, with no ads, no premium tier, and no catch.
Achievements
A social app with no scores to chase
I stripped out everything that makes social media performative: likes, follower counts, ranking algorithms, and stranger recommendations. What's left is a chronological feed of real moments shared with the people you chose. The result is a calmer, warmer product that people actually want to open.
Privacy as the whole point, not a feature
Circles is invite-only, and profiles stay invisible to anyone outside your circle. Content is stored only for the people you shared it with, with no data selling and no tracking. I designed the trust model into the architecture from day one, so privacy is structural rather than a setting.
Owning the full product lifecycle
Because Circles is mine, I make every call, from the philosophy on the landing page to the release pipeline behind the apps. It's the clearest proof of how I work: taking a product from an idea to something real, shippable, and maintained, and owning it end to end.
React Native / Expo / TypeScript / Supabase
Want me to own your
product like this?
Tell me what you're building. I'll tell you what's possible, what it'll take, and whether I'm the right person to own it, on a free 30-minute call.
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