We built the thing we needed.

The story

We’re two engineers who have been friends for a long time. Somewhere along the way, careers and kids and different cities turned the friendship into a group chat. Hundreds of messages a month, and none of them the conversation either of us actually wanted to have.

We tried scheduling calls. Calendar tetris, every time. We tried voice notes. Better, but they vanish into the same scroll as everything else. What we wanted was simple: a way to say the real thing, with our actual faces, and have the other person answer the same way when they got a minute.

So we built it, first for our own groups. It turns out a lot of groups have the same problem. The monthly meeting is the only time anyone says anything that matters, and it’s the first thing to get cancelled.

What we believe

Depth over volume

Most of the internet is optimised for how much you post. Bondfires is optimised for whether the four people who matter actually heard you. Camps are small on purpose. Threads stay threads. There is no public feed to perform for.

Your time is yours

Nobody should have to be free at eight o’clock to be a good friend. Everything in Bondfires works on your schedule: record when you can, watch when you can, reply when you can.

Your conversations are yours

Videos are visible only to the camp they were posted in. We don’t sell data, we don’t run ads, and we don’t use your conversations to train anything or target anyone. We make money the plain way: some members pay for Plus, Premium, or Pro.

Accessible by default

Joining a camp, watching, and replying are free and will stay free. Real community shouldn’t require a retreat weekend and a four-figure invoice.

Where we are

Bondfires is live on iOS and Android and is run by the two of us. The first camps are our own groups and the groups of people who asked to try it. If you lead a group and want to be one of them, start here. If you just want to say hello,support@bondfires.org reaches both of us.