Angel investment opportunity
Invest in the platform replacing the endless scroll.
“The local discovery market is a $200B+ industry dominated by platforms that charge businesses to exist and punish them for not paying. We built the alternative, and it's already working.”
Who we're looking for
We want angels, not venture capital.
We are not looking for enterprise capital, or a board seat that pressures us to extract fees from the people and businesses we exist to help, or investors who will ask us to “optimize monetization” by charging restaurants to appear on their own listing page.
We will always be free for users and free for businesses. That is not a launch strategy. That is the mission, and it doesn't change at Series A or at 10 million users.
Because of that, we anticipate 99%+ net margins. When you don't build infrastructure to extract fees from both sides of every transaction, the cost structure is simple. Advertising revenue against near-zero marginal costs produces margins that fee-dependent platforms can't match.
We want angel investors who believe in helping both sides. Users deserve to discover great places without being monetized. Businesses deserve to be found without being taxed.
What we want
- Angel investors who share the mission
- Patient capital that understands organic growth
- Partners, not controllers
- People who got rich by helping people
What we don't want
- VC firms that demand fee extraction
- Board seats that override the mission
- Pressure to "monetize the user base"
- Anyone who thinks free means unprofitable
Traction
Traction without paid acquisition
- Google search impressions
- 329K
- First 60 days
- Organic clicks
- 2,250+
- First 60 days, $0 ad spend
- Total page views
- 127K+
- All time
- Verified human visitors
- 4,068
- Interacted with a page
- Venues listed
- 25,946
- Live
- Manhattan neighborhoods
- 45
- Quiz questions
- 8
- Total capital raised
- $0
Problem and solution
Less scrolling, more going.
Mood-based matching
8 questions across location, time, category, type, setting, group, crowd, and budget.
Time-aware
Moodap knows it’s 10 PM on a Friday. Categories, types, and results adapt to the time of day.
Video reviews
Review submissions request browser location and compare submitted coordinates with the venue. This is not identity verification or independent proof of presence.
Low friction
No account. No download. Works in any browser. Designed for the moment someone’s standing on a street corner.
Editorial rankings
Weighted rotation prevents repetitive results. No business can buy a higher position.
Free business profiles
Claim, update, add photos and menus, and see analytics. No subscription and no premium tier.
Revenue model
How Moodap makes money
A scarcity ad model
Most platforms sell unlimited ad inventory: more ads, more revenue, worse experience. We do the opposite.
One sponsored slot per neighborhood and category. No auction for position and no premium placement. Scarcity makes each slot more valuable and removes competition between advertisers.
Advertisers are partners who keep the platform free, with full share of voice in their slot. The advertisers fund the mission, the mission keeps it free, free keeps the users, and users make the ads valuable.
Phase 1, live now
Local business ads
A clearly labelled sponsored slot on quiz results, targeted by neighborhood and category. The business pays for visibility in its area, not for a higher ranking.
High-intent, hyper-local audience.
Corporate partnerships
National brands reaching local, high-intent audiences in real time. Someone who just said “I want cocktails in the West Village right now” is worth more than 1,000 random impressions.
Real-time intent, labelled placements.
Phase 2, venue page advertising
25,946 venue profile pages are already ranking on Google and driving organic traffic. Each page is a high-intent placement: someone searching “best pizza West Village” who lands on a Moodap venue page is exactly who a local advertiser wants to reach. Local and corporate slots on venue pages are the next revenue layer, with no additional acquisition cost.
Phase 3, platform services (free to users and businesses)
Reservations
Free to users and restaurants, with no per-cover fee. Revenue from advertising shown during booking.
Food ordering
No 30% commission. Restaurants keep the full ticket. Revenue from advertising and payment processing margins.
Ticket sales
Face-value tickets with no convenience fees. Revenue from a small flat processing fee and advertising at checkout.
Fair Fare rides
No surge pricing. A fair margin between rider price and driver payout. Volume-based revenue.
VIP program
Perks, early access, and priority bookings. Brand-sponsored or subscription-based.
Data and insights
Anonymized, aggregated mood and intent data: which neighborhoods are trending and when people go out. Valuable to brands, cities, and real estate.
“We're tired of 50% fees standing between users and businesses, and of surge pricing that punishes people for needing a ride when it's raining. We think platform fees are a dying breed, like paying for data and minutes on cell phones in the early 2000s. Everyone accepted it because there was no alternative. We're building the alternative.”
The math
- Venue pages, growing
- 25,946
- Sponsored slot per neighborhood and category
- 1
- User acquisition cost
- $0
Every venue page is an organic search landing page that costs nothing to acquire traffic for. Each quiz completion is a high-intent ad impression. As the platform grows from Manhattan to all five boroughs and then to more cities, ad inventory grows with venue count, and intent data makes each impression more valuable than generic display advertising. Each planned service layer adds revenue without adding acquisition cost.
Market
Market opportunity
- Local discovery and services TAM
- $200B+
- Restaurant reservations, food delivery, local advertising, event tickets, and rideshare combined.
- NYC tourists per year
- 66M+
- Every visitor asks “where should I eat?” Plus 8.3M residents.
- Target cities
- 150+
- Manhattan is the proof of concept. The model can repeat in any city with restaurants and bars.
Competitive advantage
Why Moodap wins
Advantages
SEO moat
25,946 indexed venue pages generating organic traffic daily. Every new city multiplies this.
Zero CAC
Google sends traffic for free. No paid acquisition. The venue pages are the growth engine.
Network effects
More users can contribute more reviews and profile activity, supporting continued product learning.
A different starting point
Yelp is reviews. Google is maps. TripAdvisor is tourism. Moodap starts by asking “what are you in the mood for?”
What we've shown
Organic demand exists
329K impressions and 2,250+ clicks in 60 days with zero marketing. People are searching for what we built.
The product works
Venue directory, quiz engine, business claims, video reviews with submitted location signals, and itinerary builder.
Businesses want in
Claims come in organically. Businesses find us and claim their profiles without outbound sales.
It scales
Built on Next.js, Supabase, and Vercel. The architecture that runs Manhattan today can run more cities without a rewrite.
Roadmap
Four phases
- Phase 1Live
Manhattan
- 25,946 venues
- Mood Match quiz
- Business claims
- Video reviews with submitted location signals
- Itinerary builder
- Ad infrastructure
- Phase 2Next
All NYC and revenue
- Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, Staten Island
- Local ad sales
- Corporate ad partnerships
- Public launch (testing banner off)
- First revenue
- Phase 3Planned
Services layer
- Free reservations
- Free food ordering
- Face-value tickets
- Fair Fare rides
- VIP program
- Phase 4Vision
National scale
- 150+ US cities
- City-level partnerships
- Aggregated intent data
- Full-loop experience
Use of funds
Where investment goes
Engineering
40%A full-stack developer to accelerate reservations, ordering, rides, and multi-city expansion.
Borough expansion
25%Data ingestion, venue verification, and neighborhood mapping for Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, and Staten Island.
Sales and partnerships
20%Local ad sales, corporate ad partnerships, and venue relationships at scale.
Infrastructure
10%Database scaling, CDN, monitoring, and security for multi-city growth.
Legal and entity
5%Corporate formation, IP protection, trademark registration, terms of service.
The founder
Built lean, on purpose
There were three plans. The enterprise version: $250K, 9 developers, 18 weeks. The lean version: $100K, a CTO, a senior dev, 9 AI agents, 15 weeks. What actually happened: a solo founder with 25 years of SEO and digital marketing experience built the entire platform using Claude by Anthropic as a development partner: the quiz engine, the venue database, the admin dashboard, the tracking infrastructure, the business claim system, and the SEO strategy that generated 329K impressions in 60 days. One person and one AI, in about 60 days, for under $600.
The $600 version shipped more features, more venues, and better SEO than either budget plan scoped, a 99.8% cost reduction. That says a lot about operating efficiency going forward.
Investment accelerates what's already working. It doesn't fund an idea. It funds a product with traction.
Let's talk
Help us build a platform that is free for everyone.
We're seeking angel investors who believe a platform can be free for everyone and still be very profitable. No venture capital, and no board seats that compromise the mission.
invest@moodap.com