More than shows
Most of us have more in us than the people around us know about. An instrument in the corner. A skill we picked up and never use. A tool in the shed, a room that sits empty on Sundays, a hobby we’d love to share with someone.
Nearby, someone is looking for exactly that. Usually neither of us knows the other exists.
It started with a jam
Acompani started with one of us looking for people to play music with in Leuven. A search turned up a Facebook page that posted the odd one-off jam. Later, at a live music bar with flyers all over the walls, came an invite to a WhatsApp group for another jam, and then a Messenger chat for a third.
It was all there. It was just scattered. To find it, you had to know someone or already be standing in the right place. And starting your own meant a Facebook page or a group chat run by some large company, just to ask “anyone want to play on Sunday?”
Plenty of people stay in their rooms. Not because they want to, but because they don’t know where they’d go, or that anyone nearby shares what they love.
We need company
We have a lot of freedom, and none of us wants to give it up. But none of us is independent of one another. We earn because someone values what we do. The things we own are useful because someone makes, fixes or sells them.
Being independent doesn’t mean needing no one. It means being free to choose how you take part, what you offer, and who you share it with. Every person you know nearby is another option.
Interdependence is not the opposite of independence. It is what makes independence sustainable.
The internet made it easy to reach the whole world, and we wouldn’t give that up. But most connections close to home don’t need another global marketplace, or an algorithm deciding what we care about.
They often just require us to know that the other person exists.
Build a home where you are
When you haven’t found your home, the answer isn’t always to keep looking for it. Sometimes it’s to start building one.
That matters most to people starting out, especially younger people arriving in a city they help keep alive but can’t always settle in. The people who came before built much of what we have, and they know how a place works. The people arriving need a way to take that and build something of their own.
Success should not have to mean escape.
Start something small
That’s what Acompani is for: the easiest way to start something small near you, and to find what others started.
Put what you have on the map: an event, a skill, something to lend or sell, a space. They link to each other. A space hosts a jam, and the jam brings together people who go on to start something else.
“Jam with me, free” belongs here as much as “guitar lessons, €20 an hour”. If you don’t quite know yet what you can do, try it. Post your hobby, build a small portfolio, take a couple of bookings. If it grows, move on to your own website or your own business. This is a place to begin, not a place you have to stay.
A company of collectives
Acompani is a company in the oldest sense. Not a business with a product, but a company of collectives: groups of every size, from one person to a club to a local business, finding each other on one map.
It won’t become a feed built to keep you scrolling, or a hustle marketplace. It isn’t here to replace your group chats. It’s the version strangers can find.
What it costs
Putting something on the map costs a little time. Live listings use it up. That keeps the map fresh, and it gives what you post some weight: when you put something into the world for real, you mean it.
You can top up for a small amount, but the main way to get more time is to bring people in. Every person you invite earns time for both of you. That’s the point. A company isn’t measured in money or minutes, but in the people you connect with, the friends you make, the people you share your bread with.
It also keeps things fair. Nobody can flood the map with things they don’t care about and crowd out someone who’s just starting. This is about respect for everyone’s passions, and sharing what we have rather than getting the most out of the money system.
Owned by the people in it
Acompani should belong to the people who use it. For now it’s small, run and paid for by one of us. The hope is that it earns just enough to pay for itself, and puts the rest back into businesses and projects in the communities that use it, so money goes around the neighbourhood instead of leaving it.
The plan is to open the code and hand more of it to the community over time. If you’d like to help shape that, get in touch.
A way back
We want people to feel there’s a way forward, and that the way we’ve built things hasn’t left them out in the cold.
Maybe the answer to a connected world isn’t to disconnect from it. Maybe it’s to become connected in more directions: to the world, and to the people next door.