They Became Friends Before They Knew What Each Other Looked Like. That's the Idea Behind noProbs.

Marijus met a Swede relocating to Lithuania through Reddit. They connected as people first before either knew anything about the other's appearance. They're still close friends today. Somewhere in that friendship was the entire thesis for a company: what if a social app removed the face from the first impression, and let people connect on who they actually are?

How It Started

For ten years, Marijus moved from place to place, and learned firsthand how hard it is to maintain real relationships while doing it. The Reddit friendship crystallized something he'd been feeling the whole time. They'd become genuinely close before appearance ever entered the equation and that was the point. There was room, he realized, for a faceless social app, one where connection came before looks.

That friendship is still going. So is the idea it started.

Building From the Baltics

The Baltics handed noProbs both the problem and the means to solve it. These are small, close-knit communities where people genuinely want to see each other succeed, and the startup ecosystem mirrors that as founders here are approachable, humble, and quick to help.

But Marijus sees the other side clearly. Despite being among the fastest-growing and most successful countries in the region, many people here struggle with loneliness and meaningful connection. On Reddit, he kept seeing how many people wanted to connect but had no idea where to start. That gap with real people, real isolation, no obvious first step is what drives the company: building a place where genuine relationships can actually form.

How It Works

noProbs helps people build meaningful connections based on shared interests, personality, and values rather than appearance. The typical user has relocated, works remotely, or simply finds it hard to meet people they truly click with.

Users build a profile around who they are and what they care about, and noProbs helps them discover like-minded people and communities. The problem it dissolves is the tyranny of the first impression by giving people a way to connect through values and personality instead of a photo. Unlike traditional social platforms, it doesn't optimize for attention or engagement. It optimizes for meaningful interaction, which is a genuinely different design goal.

Under the hood: noProbs runs on Vue 3 with Tauri 2 for native iOS and Android apps. The backend lives entirely on Supabase (Postgres 17, real-time subscriptions, auth, and Deno edge functions), recently migrated over from Laravel. Styling is Tailwind CSS 4 with PrimeVue components, transactional email via Mailgun, push notifications through FCM.

The most telling early signal arrived before the app was even finished. Over the Christmas season, the team ran several noProbs events in Vilnius with games and activities designed to help people connect, drawing newcomers, expats, and people simply after new connections. The win wasn't the turnout; it was how fast people opened up. Many stayed long past the end of the evening, then spun up their own group chats and organized their own meetups. The most striking part: after the first connection, they didn't need noProbs anymore. They just kept building relationships on their own. That's the product working exactly as intended.

The Hard Part

The hardest chapter was people. Marijus struggled to find the right team, especially on the technical side, and members came and went. What was meant to take a few months took a year to launch publicly.

It was a genuinely low period. He questioned his ability to hire, to organize, to lead. Watching other founders celebrate wins while he felt stuck made him wonder whether he was actually capable of building a company. What pulled him through was what the struggle taught him: he understands people, processes, and product far better now, and building the same thing today would be dramatically faster.

That lesson has a sharp edge to it. His biggest wrong assumption was trusting the vibe on early hires. "If you have doubts about someone at the beginning, they usually don't disappear," he says. Some people prove you wrong but relying on a feeling is a poor way to choose who you build with. The related lesson: be careful doing business with friends. It can work, but only when they're highly reliable and have strong emotional intelligence.

What's Next

Here's where noProbs gets ambitious. The plan is to turn it into an RPG-style social experience by using game mechanics to make meeting people feel natural, fun, and less intimidating.

Users will explore an interactive map, completing missions, discovering activities, meeting people, and joining communities. Businesses will be able to list experiences on the platform; users can create and customize avatars and unlock upgrades as they participate. Marijus's shorthand for the vision is "Pokémon Go for socializing" but instead of collecting Pokémon, you discover places, experiences, and people around you.

The foundation is being built now: 3D customizable characters and the interactive map, with an MVP of the interactive experience targeted for September.

The Toolbox

Marijus is direct about his daily driver: Claude has become an essential part of his workflow. It's not perfect, he says, but it has meaningfully accelerated how the team thinks, builds, and solves problems.

For inspiration, he points to two founders. A recent Lithuanian interview with Tadas Burgaila, co-founder of Kilo, struck him for its humility and honesty about what building a startup actually takes (it's in Lithuanian). And Markus Villig's story stays with him.Starting Bolt young, focused on a real problem, pushing through the difficulty of building a global company from a small market. The lesson Marijus takes from it: you don't need Silicon Valley to build something world-class. You need persistence, a clear vision, and the willingness to keep improving.

🎮 How you can help: The team is strong, but the next hire noProbs is actively looking for is a game designer. Someone who can help shape the gamification, interactive maps, and character experience as it moves toward that RPG vision. Everything so far has been built in-house. If that's you, or you know the right person, reach out via Marijus or at noProbs.