Pocketrides was founded in a Fayetteville, AR shed in early 2022 with the goal of making group bike rides with friends easier to plan.

Over the course of a year (and several twists and turns), our vision expanded to become an all-in-one group messaging platform and digital town square.

Our name is a reference to the wonderful community of cyclists we're lucky to call our friends, who showed us that taking care of each other and where we live is the building block for a society that works for everyone.

Creating a social platform during the year Elon took over Twitter, the platform we're building with Pocketrides rejects the brazen decision-making of a few tech executives and instead, is looking to the community for help. Here's where we're at so far:

1. Instead of endless scrolling, your home feed has an ending.
2. Likes given out by subscribers are worth a penny each.
3. The company's business model precludes us from selling customer data to make money.

Our vision is to steward a digital community built with the kinds of features that help the cities where we live thrive, while solving real pain points like finding community at a local level.

By starting from an ethical place as a company, we hope to give the next generation of content creators, community activists, artists, musicians and creatives a healthier place to express themselves, while having a transparent and fair way to earn from their creativity.

And by committing our profits for climate action, we aspire to be a source of hope and forward momentum, doing the hard work to confront an existential crisis made worse by our global economic model of greed and extraction. A green future driven by a circular economy is possible, and we can build it together on Pocketrides.

— Michael & Caleb
May 2023