Building BeThere
A privacy-first event app built for Switzerland. Real plans, not group chats. This project is discontinued.
This project is discontinued. I am no longer working on BeThere.
When I started building BeThere, I wanted to solve a problem I kept running into: social events in Switzerland are still organised through chaotic WhatsApp groups, scattered Instagram posts, or word-of-mouth — with no central place to actually manage or discover them.
BeThere was a privacy-first event app that allowed people to create, discover, and join events in a structured way. Private events stayed private through invite codes, while public events could be discovered on a map — without turning social plans into an ad-driven feed.
Tech Stack
- React Native (Expo) — cross-platform mobile with a single codebase for iOS and Android.
- Supabase — PostgreSQL database, authentication, row-level security, and real-time subscriptions.
- Row Level Security (RLS) — access control for private events, invitations, and host permissions enforced directly at the database level.
- MapLibre — open-source maps for event discovery without Google Maps.
The Hard Part
Designing a data model that supports both public discovery and private invite-only events without leaking information between them. The solution was combining Supabase authentication with strict RLS policies — the frontend stays simple, and all the critical rules live in the database.
Why It Stopped
The idea had real potential, but the app required enough people using it to be useful — the classic cold-start problem for social products in a small market. I decided to stop and redirect my time toward projects that don't depend on network effects to work from day one. The codebase stays as a reference.
