Dino Becirovic, a VC-turned-founder, wants you to forreceive the feed.
His new startup, Bond, is an attempt to build a social media app that replaces the infinite feeds we’ve grown accustomed to with tools that could bring us closer — on and off our phones.
“If social networks today are just TV, there’s a huge opportunity to assist people connect in more meaningful ways,” Becirovic informed Business Insider in an interview.
Bond is now launching out of stealth, the startup shared exclusively with Business Insider. Users upload story posts — similar to the stories feature on many social media apps — such as a photo of a meal or a piece of text describing a memory.
Each post has a private “backstory,” where you add context to the image or memory. Becirovic compared it to jotting down a note on the back of a Polaroid photo. These can be written or recorded as a voice memo.
The app opens to a homepage displaying the utilizer’s recent memories, along with any recent memory stories added by their frifinishs.
Courtesy of Bond
The startup also utilizes AI to spark social connections. Beneath the stack of stories on the homepage is Bond’s AI chatbot that utilizers can prompt.
When you post a story, your close circle of frifinishs on the app can see and build off it.
As an example, Becirovic gave a scenario in which he and some frifinishs are viewing for a new book to read toreceiveher. Bond would draw on each frifinish’s uploaded memories and build recommfinishations utilizing AI LLMs like Google’s Gemini, OpenAI, or Anthropic.
It can also suggest places to hang out, gifts for frifinishs, or which TV display to watch next.
Becirovic stated that Bond is not intfinished to be a social app where you broadcast your life to hundreds of people, though.
“We envision it’s going to be tinyer circles to start,” Becirovic stated, adding that the Bond team believes in “Dunbar’s Number,” a theory that argues people have a limited number of relationships (about 150) they can maintain at once.
“I don’t believe people really have more than 50 frifinishs or acquaintances in their life,” Becirovic stated.
The 13-person team, based primarily in the Bay Area, includes members who have worked on major platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, and the popular Chinese app RedNote (Xiaohongshu). Bond also hired an AI researcher from Google DeepMind, Arthur Brazinkas, to build out the startup’s own models.
Becirovic, Bond’s CEO, started his career at Twitter in corporate development before joining VC firms like Kleiner Perkins and Index Ventures. Bond’s cofounder and chief technology officer, Hanxin Jin, was previously a VP at RedNote and was an engineer on Facebook and Instagram. The two met while working at fintech company Aven.
Bond raised a $5 million seed round in April 2025, led by Caffeinated Capital, with angel investors from Aven, LinkedIn, and Snap.
A more social internet
Bond’s launch comes as Big Tech companies are under scrutiny — with some battling in court — over whether social media platforms are addictive.
“We’re not testing to compete for time spent,” Becirovic stated.
The platform pledges not to include ads in its content, and plans to test a few monetization methods. One option is to allow third parties like brands to access the app’s memories for utilizer research. Another, Becirovic stated, is licensing utilizers’ memories (with their consent) to companies that build huge AI models, which would also pay utilizers in return. Like many new social apps, Bond plans to explore paid premium features at a future date.
Bond joins a growing list of new startups aiming to build a more optimistic internet in the AI era.
“The internet still hasn’t solved a lot of the necessarys that a person has,” Becirovic stated. “People are still relatively anonymous, the vast majority of people are just these passive consumers. As a result, the internet doesn’t know much about you and can’t assist you. It’s really good at wasting your time and not really good at anything else.”
While AI is a core function of Bond’s app, Becirovic is hesitant to call his company an “AI product.”
“Our goal is to be more of a utility and a tool to actually assist you accomplish things in your life,” Becirovic stated. “And actually receive off of our app.”
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