Built inside a real friendship.
Frelio was made by two friends born a generation apart. Different decades, different playlists, same conviction: the best things in life come from actually showing up for people.
The conversation that started it
About a year before Frelio, Daniel told a leadership coach something he hadn't really said out loud. He works remote and mostly alone, a lot of the week on Zoom, and he wanted to grow his friendships but his life wasn't set up for it. The days filled up with work and the people he cared about got the leftovers.
The coach didn't tell him to work less. He encouraged Daniel in the work he does with systems, fifteen years of building the follow-up machinery underneath organisations, and challenged him to point that same skill at his relationships. Reminders. Notes. Checking in on purpose instead of when someone happened to come to mind.
Something clicked. Everything Daniel teaches about communication, logging the call, following up, direct contact over broadcasting, applies to friendship too. He'd been telling organisations for years that reach isn't relationship, and running his own friendships on memory.
The other problem
Daniel is also, by his own account, horrible at remembering names. He'll have a genuinely good conversation with someone, remember what they do and what they're worried about, and lose their name by Tuesday. Which sounds small until you notice it's the one thing you need to ever talk to them again.
Where Josh comes in
Josh is genuinely good at both of these. He meets new people like it's nothing, and he sows into the friendships he already has with an intentionality that's a little convicting to watch. He wasn't always like that. He put in real work over a couple of years to build those two things into skills, and he writes about that work in the notes on this site.
Between his story and the coach's challenge, the two of them set out to build the notebook they kept wishing they had: something to help you remember the people you meet, and to be intentional with the ones you already know.
What we were stubborn about
No feed and no followers. Nothing you write leaves your devices; it syncs through your own iCloud and that's it. And it never grades your friendships. There was a version with a health score for a while, and it made us feel worse every time we opened it, so it's gone. Frelio helps your memory. It doesn't become your brain.
Come be one of the first.
We run a small Founders Circle in Slack: the people who try things first and tell us what's broken or what's missing. It's not fancy, and you're welcome in.