Hi everyone! I’m Paul, co-founder of Axir. I like origin stories and I wanted to share with you how I thought of Axir. Like most ideas I suppose, it came from a frustration. It all started during my university years in Switzerland. I was in the best possible place to meet people, yet when I wanted to ski, hike, wakeboard… I found very little people with similar schedule and levels. Later, working as an engineer and architect, meeting active people got even harder. One beautiful Sunday, I was walking alongside Zurich’s lake and saw a man alone in his Master-craft (a boat especially made to wakeboard), looking very bored. I asked him why on such an amazing day he wasn’t wakeboarding. And his answer hit me: ”I don’t know anyone who wakeboards”. We right away exchanged contacts and I was invited every time he was going on the water. At the time, there were Facebook, Meetup and even Couch-surfing or Tinder. Yet, there was no platform for my Master-craft friend and I to connect. That Sunday evening, I drew the first sketches of Axir! I started telling everyone about my idea to get initial feedback. I got two things out of it: almost everyone was looking for an active friend to share their own passion. The second was my first check. Only condition: I had to quit my current job to be fully concentrated on Axir. From a blank piece of paper, It took me about three month to design with Sketch a full app. My architecture background helped immensely. I decided to learn Swift and get myself familiarized with the iOS framework. My coding skills were limited to Matlab and some Python. During that time I met Claudia, now my co-founder, wakeboarding. Having many similar passions, we started doing many activities together and when I told her about Axir, she quit her banking job to join the initial Axir team. We move to LA: big user base, sunny all year long and great for entrepreneurs. Startup life started: the greatest and toughest learning period of my life. The culture difference between Europe and USA is enormous, especially in the workplace. Pitching is done completely differently: USA you sell a dream, EU you prove facts. What made us continue no matter what was the feedback from users. Some wrote us they were out of depression thanks to Axir’s events and people they met. Many found best friends and some became partners. I personally met 95% of all my LA friends through Axir. Axir grew almost completely organically. And the four main Angel investors were first users who loved the app and contacted us to invest! The app grew a lot, so much so that we had to upgrade many parts of the app stack. John and Alex joined the team to make Axir one of the greatest apps out there. We were in the middle of the work when the lockdown hit. We were working so much that apart from wearing a mask when buying groceries, I didn’t even notice there were any changes. Within a week, we introduced Virtual events. Users could connect and video call: some fun ones were online workouts, online drinks and challenges. Since then, Axir has grown in many big cities, on the West and East coast of the USA, France, Switzerland and Germany. And we are launching new cities every month. In this post-covid Era with plan to lock people into a Metaverse, Axir makes a stand. Humans are a deeply social species. We will always need social life, friends, family.

👋 Hi Product Hunt! My name is Claudia, co-founder of Axir and CTO. I think sharing how Axir came to be and a little about me will help you see how passionate our small team is about our project. I started my career in a whole other industry: banking & finance. After graduating in Italy I moved to Zurich, Switzerland and worked for a few years in the industry. But I always had the feeling of never really making anything concrete. One day I met Paul, my co-founder, wakeboarding on the lake in Zurich. We became close thanks to our common passion for activities (🏍 🎿 🏄‍♂️). When I first heard Paul's idea for Axir, I was instantly hooked. I quit my job to join the team right away. With my background, I initially thought I could help the company with financial related matters. But as we were putting down the concept for Axir, I discovered my true calling: coding 🥸. I learned how to code and have been developing Axir since day one, slowly expanding my skills - especially since John joined the team - from front-end to database and finally the backend. For me, the best things about Axir is the community. I feel everyone on the app is passionate, active and looking for new adventures and friends. Despite all the activities on the app, we all have the drive to be active and the love for the outdoors in common 🌲. I love meeting super interesting new people and I'm amazed at how much closer I've become with my friends who joined the app. In these times where meeting new people is hard and most of us feel lonely and disconnected, Axir can bring people together in real life to create unforgettable memories and real friendships. What drives me the most is our success stories and how Axir changed people's lives (https://axirapp.com/our-users) One feature of Axir I am particularly proud of is women-only events. Women can connect and meet their BFFs in total privacy. I love to post boxing and brunch events and meet incredible women. 🚀 We hope you enjoy using Axir to make new friendships and share unforgettable moments through events you will create or join. Please share any feedback or questions you have about Axir! 👕 PS: here is the discount link (https://axirstore.com/discount/P...) 👕