Introducing kyagi: Hygienic Social Media Designed for Deeper Connection

Disclaimer: no AI was used in the writing of this article

Introduction: Reimagining the Social Network 

Roommates for two years and now, in our last two months of school, cofounders building an app to stay connected while living on separate coasts. We’ve spent two years in a social experiment, testing how to make connections and then deepen them, and now we’re faced with the task of how to maintain them post-graduation. We’ve accepted that social media as it currently stands does not adequately serve the job. 

Instagram is dead and you’ve become the product. AI slop here, AI slop there, and influencers everywhere. These apps are designed for addiction, peddling performativity while making users feel more disconnected than before. We’re changing that with kyagi, because we still believe in the grand promise of social media. 

Rewind to the mid-2000s during the early days of MySpace, Facebook, Instagram, and AIM: elders reconnecting with long-lost childhood friends, incessant poke wars, and real plans being made. Today, two decades later, the platforms have spoiled—gone bad with brain rot-inducing content. 

When social media is no longer social, where do we go from here? 

Punitive Restrictions are the Status Quo: The Sticks (and the Bricks)

Increasingly, users are going to extreme lengths to reduce their time on social media through a slew of tools: screen time limits, Brick (a physical device that locks a user out of their phone), and digital detox apps. The challenge is that users still miss out on friends’ updates, feel disconnected from the people who matter, and inevitably return to the apps. 

Such ‘sticks’ treat social media as a pure pathology to be eliminated. But as a social media native generation, abstinence isn’t realistic or even desirable—we still want to be in touch with close friends and family, no matter where they are in the world. 

What’s missing then, is a tool that works with our habits, not against them.

Healthier Social Hygiene with the Carrot: kyagi

Perhaps the goal isn’t less social media, but better social media. 

At a gathering recently, a close friend said she likes to “microdose social media” through apps with limited avenues for engagement, like Strava and Beli. As we set out to build a tool that harkens back to what social media was meant to be, we keep returning to the early days of legacy social media platforms, when they used to be fun, playful, and genuinely social. At the same time, we aim to encourage real-world socialization and help users “touch grass.”

So we built kyagi: an app where users see updates from friends, with the only scroll that ends. The scroll is finite because each user has a “village” of up to 40 close friends and family, so the feed is only populated with thoughts, photos, and voice memos from people users truly want to prioritize. Each profile then contains an archive of intimate, meaningful moments from their life. Users can select 20 core villagers, and we algorithmically select the other 20 villagers that rotate weekly from their complete list of followers. 

In tandem, we’ve built in-app encouragement to connect offline: each user is prompted to set weekly priorities (e.g., drawing class, marathon training, grocery runs, facetime session while doing laundry) and has visibility into their followers’ calendars to make plans IRL. We believe there is joy in helping each other accomplish priorities for the week and that we need to lower the friction to hang with friends nearby and far. 

The app is designed as a modern address book. Users set their home city so that when traveling, they can see which friends are nearby. They can also flag upcoming trips to ping friends at their destination and create spontaneous plans. No more scouring WhatsApp groups to find out who’s living in San Francisco, New York, London, Accra, Hong Kong, Seoul, or [insert any city]. 

As we begin to beta test with ~50 users on the app, we’ve seen early traction with villages forming organically around people’s true friends and priorities, with more genuine engagement than we anticipated. We’re excited to grow as the Class of 2026 stays connected post-grad, the Class of 2027 maintains friendships over a scattered summer, and we all reconnect with friends far beyond the HBS bubble.

The bigger bet is that our generation wants something better— a way to maintain and develop friendships through distinct walks of life. Join the kyagi beta, or simply reflect on how you want to feel after you log off. Visit us at kyagisocial.com. 

Alyssa Kocak (MBA ’26) is co-founder of Kyagi, a social app for updates from friends, with a scroll that ends. She graduated from Rutgers University with a double major in Philosophy and Communications and a minor in Digital Communications, Information and Media. Prior to HBS, Alyssa worked in shareholder activism defense at PJT Partners, at the activist fund Engine No. 1, and at the asset manager The TCW Group. She is a recipient of the 2026 HBS Leadership Fellowship.

Sonal Tyagi (MBA ’26) is co-founder of Kyagi, a social app for updates from friends, with a scroll that ends and plans it sends. She graduated from Cornell University with a major in Electrical and Computer Engineering. Prior to HBS, Sonal worked in consumer and digital strategy at Boston Consulting Group. While at business school, she interned at a music tech startup and serves as Chief of Staff at La Complice, an HBS-incubated fashion AI startup.