Urbane

Urbane set out to build a social networking platform centered around private dinners. The product’s core “magic” is the network expansion loop: a host invites friends, those friends can invite others, and the experience remains organized and frictionless.

Problem: Urbane started from a concept and needed a usable MVP fast. Key challenges:

• Making invitations and RSVPs simple enough to work over SMS
• Supporting “friends invite friends” without losing control of capacity and attendance
• Handling payments cleanly so events could run without manual follow-up
• Shipping quickly without a fragile product that breaks under real usage

Solution: Horizon Labs delivered a focused MVP with the critical workflow components:

• Built an SMS invitation interface to streamline dinner coordination
• Implemented guest-invites-guest functionality while managing limited seating capacity
• Added prepayment handling to reduce no-shows and simplify logistics
• Delivered an MVP aligned with the founder’s requirements and designed to support early validation

Impact:

• MVP delivered in 2 months
• Enabled hosts to run networking dinners with less coordination overhead
• Proved the product loop could work in a real interface (and shipped on-time without breaking)

Tech Stack:

• Frontend: React
• Backend: Node.js