LearnNearby
Find hands-on classes taught by people in your area.
VisitWebsites for meeting people nearby.
NearbyNetworks builds small, local websites that turn online discovery into real-world connection.
ClubsNearby
Discover clubs, meetups, and recurring groups around you.
VisitWant one of these in your city? Suggest a city.
Now
The current focus is tightening LearnNearby and ClubsNearby in one city before widening the portfolio.
About
NearbyNetworks is a one-person studio run by Colin Brauns. I build small websites for the place I live and release them when they work. If a tool feels useful here, it might be useful in your town too — that is how the portfolio grows.
Inspirations
Organisations we admire and want to emulate — companies that stayed small in spirit, refused to sell out their users, and got better at one thing for decades.
- Craigslist. Plain text, no ads chasing you around, a tool that does its job and gets out of the way.
- Wikipedia. A public good, run lean, that proves the internet can still be useful when nobody is trying to capture you.
- Arizona Iced Tea. Ninety-nine cents for thirty years. Holding a line on price as a way of respecting the customer.
- Dr. Bronner's. One product, made well, with values printed on the label. Growth that does not require becoming something else.
Philosophy
The internet is most useful when it helps people leave the internet: to learn together, gather regularly, help a neighbor, and become known in the places they live.
- One job per site. If it asks for a tour, it is too big.
- Local first. A site should feel correct in one city before it lives in fifty.
- Leave the internet. Every flow ends in a room, a park, or a porch.