Co-founded a local app covering 45 towns across the 815

I co-founded in815, a local app for Rockford and the towns around it. Events, discussions, clubs, video, creator tools, and bookings in one place — built for the people who actually live in the 815.

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Project Name: in815
Founded: 2026
Role: Co-Founder

Overview

I co-founded in815 with Alex Laudicina and Ian Hitt — three people from the 815, building for it. The 815 is our area code: Rockford, Illinois and the towns around it.

Rockford deserves better than a feed. Finding out what was happening here meant piecing together scattered posts, an events calendar nobody updated, and threads that had nothing to do with Rockford. Local video meant clickbait. Local news meant a paywall and an ad wall. So we built the version we wanted: one app where the events, the conversations, the clubs, the video, and the news are all actually local.

The app covers six things the 815 has been missing. Discuss is questions and polls answered by people who actually live here, every thread pinned to a real place. Events puts every show, market, and festival in one feed, sorted for tonight or this weekend, with tickets and plans attached. Clubs keeps a roster, dues, schedule, and member chats in one place so running a league or a non-profit stops being a second job. Watch is local video from local creators. Create lets anyone post, go live, and get paid — selling content, promoting a business, or taking tips from their own neighbors. Book turns a lesson, a haircut, or a photo shoot into a slot you can pay for in the app, without the phone tag.

Everything is organized around place. 45 towns are mapped relative to Rockford, and each town's color follows it everywhere in the app — so a Belvidere event looks like Belvidere wherever you run into it.

Three constraints shaped the product. Real accounts and real places, so the bots and the out-of-town noise stay out. No infinite scroll and no engagement bait — the goal is to get people out of the app and into the 815. And money stays local: tickets, club dues, subscriptions, and bookings all pay the people doing the work here.

News is next. We pull every local source — papers, fire and police, city hall, schools — then filter and distill it into what actually happened.

in815 launched invite-only in 2026, and we're letting locals in a batch at a time.