Who?
Onin was founded by serial entrepreneur and angel investor Ryan Brodie, who has over a decade of experience building app-based businesses with three exits. He previously co-founded the Muslim dating app Muzz, where he attended Y Combinator in 2017. Co-founder David Adler is a former founder and CTO who turned down lead roles from Spotify and Amazon to build Onin.
Why?
Calendars live outside the conversations that drive them and weren’t designed for the social lives we live today. Onin is solving this problem by integrating them into our favourite chat apps.
What?
Onin seamlessly integrates with every calendar and chat app, so wherever users plan, their calendar is to hand. The team has consciously built a product with zero switching costs, connecting existing tools.
How?
Onin combines familiar calendar features, such as events, scheduling, and notifications, with social features, including chats, groups, usernames, and invitations. Users can add the Onin keyboard to their phones by downloading the Onin app. They can then access their calendar from their keyboard in any app, including WhatsApp, Messenger, Instagram, Telegram or even AirBnB. Through the integration, they can check their calendar, add events, and share invites without leaving the conversation. In the Onin app, users can see a full view of their calendar and join event chats – every Onin event has a dedicated and secure chat for all participants.
Where?
Onin is based in London.
They say:
Brodie: “Across my career, there’s been one theme – building technology that brings people together. From apps that helped promote events to ones that found you a date, the calendar has always been central but disconnected. Our vision is to build a social world without fragmentation.”
Karan Mehta, early-stage investor at Octopus Ventures: “Today, services like WhatsApp are used beyond checking in with our family and friends. We use these apps to manage multiple aspects of our personal and professional lives – but the calendar is missing and causing friction. Onin elegantly solves this problem. Ryan is a visionary leader and a magnet for exceptional talent. We’re excited to see what he and the team accomplish together in the coming years.”
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