Festivals
Tens of thousands of phones and one overwhelmed cell site. Nearby uses the crowd itself: a message can hop phone to phone across the grounds.
Investments
When the towers don’t.
A private messenger with a Bluetooth mesh for festivals, parks, and emergencies. We never read your conversations, not on the internet and not over Nearby.
4Platforms from one codebase: Windows now, then iPhone, Android, and Mac
32Bluetooth hops a message can travel with no cell signal
0Ads, trackers, or conversations we can read
FreeCore product. Plus sells capacity, never privacy
Privacy
We never read conversations.
Messages are locked on the device before they go anywhere. Pigeon has no spare key. Our servers carry sealed envelopes, and phones that relay a Nearby message only forward opaque bytes. We can’t open a chat, and we don’t want to.
The wedge
Nearby is the difference.
Most messengers assume a good cell connection. At a packed festival the towers give up. In a park you’re in a dead zone. In an emergency the network is often the first thing to go. Nearby is a Bluetooth mesh, so the same locked messages still move between phones that are close, and hop through a crowd of people who also have it on.
Parks and trails
Places where data never really worked. If you’re close, at a picnic, a trailhead, or a campsite, Bluetooth still can.
Emergencies
When cell and Wi-Fi are down, people nearby can still reach each other. It’s not a replacement for 911. It’s a way to keep talking when the usual path is gone.
How it works
Encrypt once. Deliver either way.
Lock the message on the device, then send it over the internet, or over Bluetooth when that isn’t there. Each hop reaches about as far as a large room, and in a dense crowd other Pigeon users pass it along. Relays never see the text. It won’t find someone across town, and we don’t advertise it as a city-wide network.
One-to-one chats use the Signal Protocol. We didn’t invent a new cipher. The hard, defensible work is the mesh: a real messenger with a second path that doesn’t weaken the first.
Read the mesh detailsThesis
Why this is a company.
A path the others don’t have
WhatsApp, Signal, and iMessage need the internet. Offline mesh apps rarely feel like a messenger you’d give your family. Pigeon is both: private chat you can live in, plus Bluetooth when the towers fail.
One app, four places
Windows is live. iPhone, Android, and Mac are next, as the same product rather than a companion afterthought. Nearby is built for phones in a crowd, which is why shipping them well matters.
A business that isn’t the inbox
No ads. No public feed. No selling conversations. People who live in Pigeon can pay for more room. Privacy and Nearby are the product, not the upgrade.
Business
How we make money.
Private messaging stays free. Pigeon Plus is for people who really live here: more linked devices, bigger groups, larger files, extra sealed backups, and longer retention. Capacity, not confidentiality.
We won’t run ads against the inbox, put encryption on a timer, or charge to keep Nearby. If those were the levers, we’d have built the wrong company.
Now
Where we are.
Closed beta. The Windows app is available today. Phones and Mac are next, because Nearby is a phone-in-a-crowd problem. Encrypted groups, files, voice calls, and the mesh already exist. The product will keep changing.
Kastia is a small company, and engineering is most of the work. The serious next steps are shipping phones well, hardening the Bluetooth mesh in the field, and paying for an independent security review.
If you’re considering this.
Email [email protected] with “Investing” in the subject. Say who you are and why Pigeon is interesting. A few sentences is enough. This isn’t a round announcement or a data room. If it’s a fit, we’ll send what you actually need.