Why we started KYNCT

It started with a comment from a friend. Joao once told our founder and CEO: “You have so much joy and love inside of you, it just fills the room no matter what’s happening. Even when you message me, let’s go for a drink, let’s go to the park I could be having a shit day, but I know you’ll always put a smile on my face no matter the circumstance. When I leave here, I leave a chunk with you.”

That comment stayed with him. If one person could do that by accident, just by showing up what could you build if you did it on purpose, for everyone? That question is where KYNCT was born.

We noticed something everyone feels but few say out loud: technology has made us closer together and further apart at the same time. Communities were fragmenting not because people stopped caring, but because there was nowhere left to find each other. Events, conversations, opportunities, all scattered across group chats and platforms that were never built to bring people out, only to keep them scrolling in.

It started with a simple observation about student life. Moving to a new city, let alone a new country, on your own is no small thing. University is one of the few times you get real freedom to discover new places, new people, new versions of yourself. But that only happens if there’s somewhere to go. Rotterdam is a good city with a boring problem, not enough third and fourth spaces, the places you go after class, after work, after home, leading to people to stay in.

So, we built a place for students to find what was happening around them and create their own experiences, instead of chasing them through five different apps.

We hosted events for exchange students, because for a lot of them, Rotterdam was never supposed to feel like home, it was supposed to be a semester, a stop, a line on a CV. We wanted it to feel like a home away from home instead: a place they’d look back on and say, I remember those days, and it was the people who were with me, who gave me the smile on my face and the best moments

What it will grow into

It will not stay just an events app for long. Sports, music, fashion, events, communities, business, technology look like separate worlds, but the people moving through them are what connects everything. A friendship leads to an event. An event leads to discovering an artist. A community leads to an opportunity. An opportunity leads to something none of us could have planned.

KYNCT is the ecosystem built around that movement. Our technology is the foundation; the experiences, communities, and partnerships built on top of it are what give it life. We can grow into new spaces without losing what actually connects them: people, experiences, and opportunities.

Say Yes

That’s the philosophy underneath everything we build. Step outside the circle you already know. Try the thing you’ve never done. Go somewhere you’ve never been. Accept the invitation you’d normally turn down. Some of the experiences that shape us most are the ones we never planned for. And getting older should never mean getting less curious, should mean being even more curios.

Our mission

To build a community where people can be themselves, discover what they’re capable of, and become the best version of who they already are. We are starting with universities, because it’s the best platform we must start from, but never stopping there.

What we care about

• Come as you are: no performance needed to belong. That’s the whole point.
• Growth over comfort: we push people toward their potential, not toward what’s safe or familiar.
• Creativity without fear: the confidence to make and share something before it’s “good.”
• Nobody should have to look hard for their people: community shouldn’t be the hardest part of showing up.
• Community is survival, not decoration: especially in this era, the people around you are how you get through, not a nice extra.

We already play a part in each other’s lives and that’s what an economy is. KYNCT is a bet that if we lift each other up directly instead of leaving it to chance, the whole community rises with it. That’s the elevation we’re building toward.