What are we celebrating?

One question per screen. No signup, no forms.

Occasion

Date

Start time

How long

Neighborhood Search radius 8 miles

Guests

Max per vendor ($)

What do you need?

Only vendors who have actually confirmed they're open for this time slot.

The vendor side

This is what kills apps like this. A vendor will not maintain a calendar inside our app — so they don't have to. An agent texts them, they answer in plain English, and the agent turns that into structured availability.

Three ways in, depending on what the vendor will tolerate: SMS agent — plain text to their business number, the default and the one we build first · Google Calendar sync · manual screen. No app to install, no account to create, no WhatsApp.

💬Path A — the SMS agent

🧾What the agent produced

The exact object the customer search reads. The conversation above is just the input method.

📅The same thing as a calendar

Green = open · Red = booked · Grey = outside working hours

The structure, briefly

Three pieces. Everything else follows from them.

Request — occasion, date, time, duration, location, radius, guests, budget, categories.
Vendor — home base, travel radius, pricing, working hours, booked slots, setup time.
Match — one rule that crosses the two and returns available / not available.

1️⃣Customer request

2️⃣Vendor record

3️⃣The matching rule

A vendor is shown only if every condition holds:

Distance ≤ the customer's radius and ≤ the vendor's own travel radius.
Working hours — the event fits entirely inside that weekday's window.
No overlap with an existing booking, including setup and teardown on both sides.
Minimum hours for that vendor is met.
Category requested and occasion type supported.
Final price ≤ the per-vendor cap.
Freshness — availability confirmed within the last 7 days, otherwise flagged "needs reconfirming".

The two fields everyone forgets, and they are what break the product: setup time (a DJ playing at 6:00 leaves home at 4:30) and freshness ("available" from two months ago is a guess, not data).

🔁Booking states

SentRequest delivered to the vendor, awaiting reply

ConfirmedVendor accepted — the slot locks on their calendar automatically

DeclinedAlternatives available at the same time are offered

ExpiredNo answer within 2 hours → moves to the next option

Every confirmation writes back to vendor availability. Without that, two customers book the same DJ for the same hour.

🗽Why New York first

Density. A 5-mile radius in Brooklyn holds more party vendors than all of Israel. The matching rule only looks smart where supply is thick.
Neighborhood, not city. Nobody searches "New York" — they search Park Slope, Astoria, Riverdale. Location is a neighborhood with a radius in miles.
Plain text messaging. US small vendors run on SMS. The agent texts their existing business number from a real US number — nothing to install, nothing to sign up for.
Pilot boundary. Brooklyn + Queens first. Two boroughs is enough to prove supply without spreading thin.

💰Revenue model

10–15% commission on every booking that actually happens.
Paid placement in results — flat monthly fee for vendors.
Free for the customer. That is what drives volume.

⚠️Still undecided

Where the first 50 NYC vendors come from — without them the search is empty on launch day.
Payments: centralized (easy to take commission) vs direct to vendor (easy to sign vendors, hard to collect).
Cancellations and refunds — who absorbs them.
Reviews and ratings — phase one, or after there's volume.
Insurance and licensing: NYC venues often require a vendor certificate of insurance. Do we verify it, or disclaim it?

Written down explicitly so it doesn't get lost. These are business decisions, not technical ones.

What are we celebrating?

Review your booking

Requests sent

The vendor side

The structure, briefly