Wayer

The end of a little era

An adventure has come to an end. In 2022, Victor Bergholt and I started on a journey to create Wayer—a photo-sharing app designed with mental health in mind. With Victor as CEO and myself as CTO/solo dev, our mission was to enable authentic photo sharing, moving away from the curated, “perfect” images that dominate today’s platforms. By tapping into users’ camera rolls, we made it simple to share private, genuine moments with friends, reflecting the real memories behind the photos.

Over the past few years, we’ve poured ourselves into this vision. With two investments from both Antler and Unridden Ventures we made more than 10 design pivots, 15,000 Figma screens, and nearly 100 app versions, and launched our concepts in over 50 high schools across Denmark. Despite our best efforts, it has been troubling to gain continues retention. Users usually churned after the week was over, and we struggled to cultivate a core base of super users who would stick around.

How we share photos today

We still believe there’s a real need for a simple way to share authentic photos. The tools we have today either make sharing too complicated or feel disconnected from real moments:

• Google and Apple Photos: These are great for storing pictures but feel clunky for sharing. They mostly rely on email contacts, which makes the process slow and lacks any real social connection.
• Facebook Messenger: While you can share photos here, it’s not what they’re made for. Photos get lost in conversations, and there’s no easy way to revisit or organize them.
• Instagram: Sharing on Instagram is more about showing off than connecting. People mostly focus on looking good for others rather than sharing meaningful moments with friends.

What’s surprising is that most people have hundreds of photos of their friends and family just sitting in their camera roll, never shared. No app has really figured out how to bring these forgotten memories to life.

During user tests with different prototypes, one thing stood out: the excitement people felt when rediscovering forgotten photos from good times. Seeing those smiles has been our biggest motivation throughout this journey.

How we hacked acquisition

A true inspiration for us in the world of social consumer apps has been Nikita Bier, who mastered the art of launching apps like Gas through highschools. His strategy revolved around leveraging the social graph—understanding that the value of a social app depends entirely on having friends already using it. For apps like ours, reaching critical mass is everything; without friends to connect with, a single user finds little to no value.

Taking a page from his playbook, we developed a similar approach. We created an Instagram account for our app, targeting high school students. By following and interacting with students at a specific school, we were able to build curiosity and gather around 100 followers per school. Then, we’d announce a launch date, creating a sense of excitement and exclusivity for the students, and without spending money on ads or actually physically showing up highschools.

This strategy helped us achieve a strong initial social graph at each launch, with users adding an average of 10 friends after joining. Through constant refinement, this model allowed us to generate downloads and engagement fueled by genuine curiosity and a connected user base. As many times as we wanted.

The big feature that flew over people’s heads

One of Wayer’s core ideas was location-based photo sharing.

The app’s main feature, “matching,” used metadata from users’ photos—geolocation and timestamps—to find shared moments at the same place and time. This made it easy to share photos with people who were part of those moments, creating an effortless way to connect through shared experiences.

However, the concept wasn’t always easy for users to grasp. Many didn’t even realize their photos were geotagged, and explaining how it worked often required more than just a quick demonstration.

This is where the challenge of “show, don’t tell” came into play. While we knew the real "aha moment" would come from seeing the feature in action, getting users to that point wasn’t simple. A wall of text couldn’t explain the idea effectively, and without direct experience, the concept sometimes felt abstract. This pushed us to constantly refine and simplify, aiming to make the value of Wayer intuitive and clear from the start.

Some users understood the concept of matching after the first usage, mostly unfortunately didn’t.

Permissions are a work of art

Our app depends on full photo access to deliver its value, but getting users to grant this permission was difficult. Even after optimizing the process, only about 50% of users agreed, leaving the rest unable to fully use the app.

Contact permissions for finding friends added to the complexity, especially with Apple’s stricter policies. Balancing the app’s needs with building trust has been a constant challenge.

Is there even a space for another social-consumer app?

In today’s landscape, launching a new social-consumer app feels like swimming against the tide. As Andrew Chen notes in his article The end of the 1 billion active user ad-supported consumer startup, “The novelty effect has worn off on new app ideas.” Consumers have seen it all. Generally, most things has been tried after 15+ years of experimentation with social, communication, photo, and video apps have left few stones unturned.

The initial curiosity that once fueled explosive app growth is fading. People are less inclined to download and explore new apps simply because they’re new. Instead, they gravitate toward established platforms where their friends already are.

This creates a tough environment for innovation. Even with a unique idea, breaking through the noise and retaining user interest has become more challenging than ever. It’s no longer just about building something cool—it’s about proving, almost immediately, why it deserves a spot in someone’s daily life.

Chen notes that social consumer apps often have a better chance of survival if they focus on a vertical or narrower target audience, apps such as Strava and Duolingo, has achieved large a large social audience with a narrow or specific use case in mind, being running or language learning. Catering to everyone often leads to speaking to nobody.

Of course there are still exceptions to this statement, through the last couple of years we’ve seen a few social consumer app break through such as BeReal, Bluesky and Gas.

The photosharing space is a very horizontal market, it is hard to build a community and specific ‘fanbase’ around a problem that everyone has, and that everyone might not see the urgency in.

The pros and cons of being naive

People have often seen our vision as naive and impossible—and they might have been right—but that naivety is what pushed us to dream big and take risks. 
Naivety can fuel boldness. When you don’t fully understand the risks, you’re more likely to dive headfirst into ambitious projects. This mindset allowed us to tackle a tough market like social apps without fear, testing ideas and breaking ground in ways that might have scared off established entrepreneurs. Naivety also keeps the focus on possibilities rather than limitations, driving creativity and optimism.

However, naivety can blind you to the scale of obstacles ahead. We might have underestimated how hard it is to compete for attention in a crowded market or to build user trust quickly. Some challenges, felt impossible only after months of effort. There were moments when the challenges felt overwhelming, and all you could do was convince yourself it was going to work—even when the odds said otherwise. It kept us going, but it also meant we sometimes ignored the warning signs or underestimated how much effort was still needed.

Ultimately, being naive helped us start Wayer with a fearless attitude, but it also taught us the value of experience and preparation. Balancing optimism with realism is key—a lesson we’ll carry into whatever comes next.

Closing the chapter

Our journey with Wayer has come to an end, but we leave with important learnings and a strong belief in the problem we set out to solve. Building a social app today is harder than ever, and we’ve learned just how crucial trust, simplicity, and user engagement are to success. We still believe there’s a need for a better way to share authentic photos—one that helps people rediscover and share forgotten moments with friends and family. Seeing the joy this brought during our tests has kept us motivated and reminds us this is a challenge worth solving. A big thank you to everyone who supported and cheered us on, especially Antler—Michael, Julia, Fabian, Olivia, and the team—and Søren from Unridden Ventures for believing in us.

This chapter ends, but the lessons and memories will stay with us as we move forward. Thank you for being part of the journey!

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