Pie adds 'Community Homes' as it pivots from events app to social network

Pie, the social app from Bonobos founder Andy Dunn, launched a new communities feature on Tuesday that lets people set up more permanent homes for their social groups on the app — an alternative to group texts, Facebook Groups, and similar tools. Originally founded as an events app in Chicago, Pie is backed by Forerunner, Lightspeed, and Accel, along with angels including Twitter co-founder Ev Williams, and has grown to around 300,000 users.

With the new feature, called Community Homes, Pie wants users to join communities where events become a natural outcome of belonging, rather than the main draw. Each “home” has its own community feed, admin and membership controls, a shareable homepage, and event-planning tools — though anyone in the group, not just admins, can share events to the feed, to encourage more organic networking. Pie plans to soon add group chats and a feature for posting casual, plan-free bids for connection, such as asking if anyone wants to “hang out and craft together.”

Community Homes builds on earlier changes aimed at shifting Pie’s focus from events themselves to the people who attend them. Last December, the company changed its activity feed to highlight which of your connections were attending an event, rather than just listing events — a change the team says grew average time on the app from 2 minutes to 10 minutes. More recently, Pie added a “favorites” feature that lets users build out public profiles around their interests.

Dunn said he was inspired to build Pie after moving from New York to Chicago, where he initially struggled to find community, at a time when a movement toward social clubs was gaining momentum among Gen Z. The company has since added Nadya Okamoto, founder of the popular New York run club Zoomies, as a co-founder and chief marketing officer.

“I would say [Pie is] more like the original promise of Facebook and Reddit — if it wasn’t anonymous and toxic,” Okamoto said. “Rather than leading with events, which is what so many other great platforms do, I think events are more a product of having a great community-building ecosystem on the app.”

Pie is available anywhere but currently has more traction in markets like Chicago, New York, and LA.

Why it matters

The shift reflects a broader pull toward real-world community after years of online-only socializing, and Pie’s bet is that durable group spaces — not one-off events — are what keep users coming back.