Almost 28,000 Venues and Counting
27,957 dots on a map. Each one is a real place where real people go to eat, drink, and have a good time.
30 posts in this category
27,957 dots on a map. Each one is a real place where real people go to eat, drink, and have a good time.
For two months our homepage was a quiz. Google couldn’t read it. We fixed that — and a lot more.
A venue closes every day in Manhattan. Here’s how we keep 27,957 listings accurate when the city never stops changing.
Everyone asks how we built the database. Nobody asks how many times we wanted to throw a laptop out the window doing it.
Where we are today. What’s next. And the vision for where mood-based discovery can go from here.
Scaling venue pages with Incremental Static Regeneration. How we went from 50 pages to 500 to 25,000.
A venue discovery platform has a blog? Yes. Because content is the real SEO play — and these stories need to be told.
Why "best bars in East Village" matters more than "NYC bars." The long-tail strategy that powers Moodap’s growth.
80% of our traffic is mobile. That changed everything about how we design — thumb zones, font sizes, tap targets.
Real search data from our first weeks. People aren’t searching for restaurants — they’re searching for feelings.
We went live. What happened in the first 7 days — the traffic, the feedback, the things that broke, and the one text that made it all worth it.
A born-and-raised New Yorker got tired of spending 38 minutes deciding where to go — and often going nowhere at all.
The reality of being a solo founder. The 2am bugs, the doubt, the days where nothing works and nobody cares.
How Moodap makes money without selling out users. Claimed profiles, featured placements, and the future revenue model.
The stuff you can’t find on Yelp or Google Maps. The secret menu. The best seat. The bartender who remembers your name.
SEO for a platform that doesn’t fit the mold. How do you rank for "I want a chill bar tonight"?
Structured data for 25,000+ venues. Making Google and AI systems understand what we are and what we offer.
We gave five friends the link on a Saturday night and watched what happened. Spoiler: it mostly worked.
Building rich, useful pages for 25,000+ businesses — without anybody asking us to.
We built a web app. No App Store. No account creation. No barriers between you and your next great night.
Every tap matters. Every second of loading is a reason to bail. We obsessed over making this fast.
Using your location in Manhattan without being creepy about it. Walking distance, privacy, and why we never store where you are.
Star ratings are broken. A 4.2 tells you nothing about whether a bar is right for your mood tonight.
Why 7 questions? What each one does. And the psychology behind asking about mood instead of cuisine.
We mapped every Manhattan neighborhood by hand. Borders, vibes, personalities — all 43 of them.
Mood + vibe + group size + budget = your perfect venue. How we built the engine behind the match.
Building a database of every bar, restaurant, cafe, and venue in Manhattan from scratch. The messy, unglamorous reality.
Next.js, Supabase, and Vercel. Why we picked each one — and what we almost picked instead.
We could have started anywhere. But Manhattan has the density, the culture, and the urgency that makes this work.
We watched our friends spend 38 minutes deciding where to go out — and then stay home. That was the moment.
More updates posts coming soon.
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