We help decide what's worth doing tonight, then lock it into a plan.
3rdWheel is a real-world experience platform, currently limited to invited testers while we're in alpha. That access restriction is a function of testing, not our long-term model — this overview covers our market thesis, product architecture, governance approach, and how we think about long-term value for investors, the company, and our members.
Existing tools answer the wrong question.
Maps, review platforms, and events calendars are optimized to answer what exists nearby. None are built to answer what is worth doing, for a specific person or group, at a specific time. We view that gap as a structural opportunity in consumer discovery, not an incremental feature request.
We don't need to invent a market. People already spend their lives in it.
The opportunity is the member relationship that sits upstream of dining, nightlife, events, travel, wellness, shopping, and entertainment decisions — not any single one of those categories.
The Experience Graph
The core system resolves seven weighted inputs — social context, interest depth, vibe, timing, budget, geography, and occasion — into a single, locked itinerary. This model, not any individual venue listing, is the durable technical asset underlying the product.
Netflix learned what to watch.
Spotify learned what to hear.
We're learning what you want to do.
The defensibility thesis is not access to AI. It is a proprietary, compounding understanding of real-world preference, relationships, context, and behavior — the kind of understanding that only accumulates through actual use of the product.
"The question isn't 'what are you looking for?' It's 'I don't know — help us decide.'"
We start from a different question.
Not "what's nearby?" and not "what's highly rated?" — but "what are we most likely to enjoy doing, together, right now?" Search knows the world. We intend to know your world.
Three mechanisms enforce quality and coordination.
These govern how the platform's launch feature, Itinerary, functions in production today.
Enforced quality floor
Every listing must clear a minimum rating and require verified photography before it is eligible. Specialty categories are gated by keyword match on the venue's name and address, not by incidental mentions in reviews.
Composite, source-diversified scoring
Ratings blend multiple third-party sources with press, award, and verified-member data. No single source can materially move a venue's score in isolation.
Structured group consensus
Group itineraries resolve through a defined voting mechanism rather than informal chat coordination. A stop locks only once every participant has approved it.
What exists today, plainly stated.
The next milestone isn't more downloads. It's proof that each turn of the platform makes the next turn stronger.
Three revenue streams, sequenced deliberately.
Monetization is not active during alpha. The model is designed in now so it can be activated in sequence as access opens.
Subscription (MRR)
Tiered membership pricing at $7.99 and $14.99 per month, activated once public access opens.
Transactions
Progressive integration of eligible ticketing and reservation transactions directly inside a locked itinerary.
Advertising
Advertising opportunities that respect the curation standard rather than compete with it.
A lean team, backed by an operating partner with existing infrastructure.
This structure lets Seed capital go toward proving product-market fit rather than prematurely recreating every corporate function internally.
William "Greg" Young
Entrepreneur and technology consultant with experience across cybersecurity, compliance, and product and project management. Leads product vision, member experience, and platform development. His philosophy: technology should earn trust, reduce complexity, and work naturally in people's lives.
Warren Griffin Jr.
Chairman & CEO of The Code. Entrepreneur, marketer, and operator with roughly 20 years across entertainment, publishing, hospitality, live events, and technology-enabled businesses, including work with Microsoft, TIDAL, Amazon, LiveMe, and Equity Residential. Within 3rdWheel, focuses on growth, business development, strategic partnerships, and commercialization.
The Code
Minority equity holder and the operating company founded and led by Co-Founder Warren Griffin Jr. Provides 3rdWheel fractional capabilities across business development, strategy, operations, creative, technology, hospitality and member activations, brand partnerships, and influencer marketing.
Darryl Pratt, MBA
Consumer marketing and business operator with experience managing integrated campaigns and cross-functional execution for major national brands, including Campbell Soup Company and Johnson & Johnson. Brings senior commercial capacity across brand partnerships, influencer strategy, and business development.
"3rdWheel already has access to product, growth, marketing, brand, and hospitality capability while maintaining a lean direct organization. Post-raise, strategically proprietary capabilities — particularly product and engineering — will increasingly sit directly inside 3rdWheel. Lean by design. Not under-resourced by accident."
Institutional discipline from the earliest stage.
We treat governance as infrastructure, not paperwork introduced after a raise. The following controls are live in the product and the business today.
Role-based administration
A three-tier admin structure (moderator, admin, super admin) with least-privilege access, and every privileged action written to an immutable audit log.
Roadmap-gated spend
Pre-revenue capital is allocated against defined milestones — alpha, private beta, public launch, monetization — and reviewed on a fixed cadence rather than deployed reactively.
Controls live in production
Content moderation, account suspension, and soft-delete data retention are functioning parts of the platform today, not items deferred to a future release.
Owned core logic
Curation, rating, and matching logic run on infrastructure we own and control, rather than depending on an undifferentiated third-party layer.
Communication standards we hold ourselves to.
We treat investor relations as an ongoing obligation, not a fundraising-season exercise.
Written updates on product progress, key metrics, and runway on a regular cadence — independent of whether we are actively raising.
Direct access to a full product walkthrough and technical architecture review, not a marketing summary in place of substance.
Standard information rights and pro-rata participation treated as a baseline expectation, not a point of negotiation.
Reporting includes setbacks and open risks alongside progress. We would rather an investor hear it from us first.
What we're measuring
Access → Core Action
Recommendation selection rate
W1 → M3 core-action retention
Sync Up → invite conversion → members per active planner
Recommendation performance by behavioral depth
Pre-boarded CAC → retained member CAC
"We are not raising capital simply to acquire users. We are raising it to turn our most important unknowns into knowns. If the evidence isn't there, we don't blindly scale. If it is, we've earned the right to accelerate."
Early, by design.
3rdWheel is in alpha, with access currently limited to invited testers. That restriction exists to validate the Experience Graph and the Sync Up consensus mechanism under real usage — it is a function of this stage, not our access model going forward. Public access opens at later stages of the roadmap below. There is no revenue to date. Architectural decisions have been made for the platform we are building toward, not the one that exists today.
Not a waitlist
A prospective member creates an account and builds a real preference profile. They join 3rdWheel — they don't queue for it.
Access is held
Membership exists; live product access is deliberately withheld until release, by design rather than by capacity constraint.
Cohorts of 50
Access opens in measured cohorts, or individually where useful, so usage can be studied at a pace the team can actually learn from.
Cohort → usage → retention
Each cohort's usage, Sync Up behavior, retention, and resulting network effect feed directly into the release plan for the next one.
"Learn from Clubhouse. Scarcity can create demand. It cannot create retention. Control the growth. Study the behavior. Scale what retains."
Alpha
Private Beta
Public Launch
Monetization
One flywheel, three stakeholders.
3rdWheel is the decision layer between "we should do something" and "we're doing this." The goal isn't more screen time — it's more value after the screen goes away.
The mechanics that keep a member engaged are the same mechanics that compound enterprise value. An engaged member deepens the taste graph; a deeper graph improves every recommendation on the platform; better recommendations increase retention and referral — which is what ultimately compounds equity value for shareholders.
Visible identity and progress within the platform (neighborhoods explored, experiences completed) increase usage frequency and lifetime engagement.
Increased usage deepens the Experience Graph, strengthening the data advantage embedded in curation and matching over time.
Sync Up means each additional engaged member increases the platform's utility for every connection they already have on it.
Engagement depth, data advantage, and network density together form the basis for durable, defensible revenue as we move into monetization.
A $1.75M seed round, allocated against a defined sequence.
Capital reserved for growth is capacity, not an obligation to spend — it is only deployed once activation and retention evidence justifies it.
What this round is actually for.
What already exists
The product exists. The team and infrastructure exist. The controlled-growth architecture exists. The product-driven distribution mechanism exists.
What this round tests
Do people trust 3rdWheel to help decide what to do? Does that trust lead to better real-world experiences?
What comes after
Do members return, and do they naturally bring others with them?
"3rdWheel doesn't simply help people make plans. It helps people build richer lives. And the better 3rdWheel understands those lives, the more valuable the network can become."
We welcome direct conversations with early-stage investors.
For the complete deck, a product and architecture walkthrough, or governance and cap table documentation, request access below or reach out directly.