urbane startup marcus ellison horizon labs
B2B

Urbane

Private-dinner social app. We shipped the MVP in two months: SMS invites, guest chains, seating limits, prepayment.

Case study

Problem

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.

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

Outcome

  • 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)

Features & Tech Stack

MVP product build for a social networking workflow: SMS invites, guest-of-guest invitations, limited seating logic, and prepayment handling.

  • Frontend: React
  • Backend: Node.js

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