Clyx, a social app founded by Gen Z, has raised $14 million in new financing to combat one of this decade’s most persistent problems: the loneliness epidemic. The Series A round was led by Blitzscaling Ventures, and included backing from Venmo co-founder Iqram Magdon-Ismail and former Formula 1 champion turned investor Nico Rosberg.
Constructed around real-world outings rather than infinite swiping, CỄLX positions itself as a reprieve from the “planning tax” that prevents many prospective hangouts from ever taking place.
A Gen Z founder building for real-world connection
The founder and chief executive, Alyx van der Vorm, began working on Clyx last year, after seeing how difficult it had become to turn “we should hang out” into actual plans. A Harvard-trained computational neuroscientist, she studied how social networks dictate mental and physical health, and then translated that research into product decisions.
Her thesis is simple: people don’t really need more friends so much as coordination—“who’s nearby, free now, and interested in the same thing. Clyx’s work is to lessen that effort at every turn, so momentum doesn’t dissolve between intent and movement.
What the app does, really
Clyx pulls in events from platforms including Ticketmaster and even social feeds like TikTok, and then curates what’s happening in a user’s city. It also recommends places to try, and, with permission, enables users to see where friends are going.
A compatibility engine recommends people with whom you’re likely to have something in common, as well as people you could just enjoy spending time with, based on a sense of who you are most compatible with. And the app gently nudges people to connect and reconnect, so that making the first move feels less awkward.
Another aspect, Programs, chains together multiweek workshops, or multiple sessions of an activity, so the same small group meets several times.
That repetition bolsters the well-documented “mere exposure” effect — one of the most consistent predictors of friendship formation, according to the American Psychological Association.
The company says 50,000 actively purchase tickets on the platform, and over 200,000 people browse events. Clyx is live in Miami and London, and it plans to launch in New York next and to expand to São Paulo later this year.
Why loneliness is a health and market imperative
Loneliness is not simply a mood — it’s a risk factor. The U.S. Surgeon General said, in a national advisory, that lack of social connection contributes to a broad range of health problems, including heart disease and stroke. The World Health Organization has also defined social isolation as a global public-health issue.
Cigna’s survey in 2023 had 58 percent of U.S. adults saying they feel lonely with Gen Z most affected. For founders and investors, that ubiquity means durable demand: people are eager to build lightweight, low-friction ways to meet and sustain friendships away from their screens.
A crowded field, but a separate wedge
Clyx is entering a market populated by the likes of Meetup, Eventbrite, Dice, as well as social products like Bumble’s friend mode and new sites and initiatives that dating sites have brainstormed to encourage people to take their connections IRL. The distinction is where that focus is centered: Clyx treats coordination as the product core problem, not a secondary consideration.
What that means, in practical terms, is bundling discovery, social context and gentle follow-through into one flow. If an app can reliably turn the effort of ten steps into a few taps, the rate of conversion from wanting to go out to going out shoots up — along with the rate of repeat business.
What the new funding powers
According to the company, the $14 million will be used for product development, brand and cultural partnerships, and for expanding the team. That probably involves improved event data ingestion, smarter recommendations and more Programs that lock in recurring, small-group experiences.
Geographically, the plan is to expand, too. Social apps are local businesses, to begin with — density matters — so launching new cities successfully is all about curating the right early events and seeding communities that can thrive.
What to watch next
Two questions will decide Clyx’s future. Second, can it sustain engagement after the novelty wears off — especially outside the initial hubs, such as Miami and London? Second, can it find a balance between growth and safety and trust as it brings compatible connections to strangers?
If Clyx shows that it can be turned into repeat, real-world friendships if you can turn online intent online into offline action, then Clyx will have created more than a social app. It will have written a playbook for minimizing the small frictions that trap millions of people at home when they’d rather be out — one nudge, one program, one plan at a time.
