Press kit
Everything here is free to use without asking. No form, no login, no embargo.
Fact sheet
| What it is | A missed-connections app for gay, bi, trans, and queer guys. |
|---|---|
| Launch | October 2026, United States, starting in New York. |
| Platforms | iOS and Android. |
| Price | Free at launch. |
| Age rating | 18+. |
| Company | Hank Software, LLC |
| Founded | 2026 |
| Headquarters | Brooklyn, New York. |
| Founder | Stephen Wood |
| Press contact | press@heybeau.app |
About Beau
Copy-paste ready. Please use one of these rather than paraphrasing. (Standard boilerplate.)
Short — 50 words
Beau is a missed-connections app for gay, bi, trans, and queer guys. You saw him on the train, at the bar, in line for coffee, and then you didn't. Post it. Let him find you. Free on iOS and Android, with an optional subscription. Launching in the United States, October 2026. heybeau.app
Standard — 100 words
Beau is a missed-connections app for gay, bi, trans, and queer guys. Missed connections are still being written every day; they're just being written into the void, with zero odds of the right guy seeing it. Current dating apps are organized around whoever's free tonight, not the guy you saw earlier in the coffee shop.
Beau works the other direction. Post the near-miss: where you were, when, and enough detail that he'd know it was him. Anyone nearby can read it. If he thinks it's him, he says so.
Free on iOS and Android, with an optional subscription. Launching in the United States, October 2026. heybeau.app
Long — 200 words
Beau is a missed-connections app for gay, bi, trans, and queer guys… a place for the ones who almost said hello.
You post the near-miss: where you were, roughly when, and enough detail that he'd recognize himself. Anyone nearby can read it. If he thinks it's him, he says so, and the conversation starts from there. No swiping, no grid, no algorithm deciding who deserves your attention. Just the guy from the coffee shop, and a reasonable chance he's looking for you too.
Missed connections never stopped being a good idea. People still write them and still recognize themselves in them, they just do it in comment sections and group chats and city subreddits, none of which were built for it. Gay dating apps optimized for immediacy ( who's online, who's close, who's free tonight). Beau is for the other thing, the one that's harder to engineer and more fun when it lands.
Beau is built by a gay man, for his people. Safety wasn't bolted on at the end, and neither was the business model: Beau makes money from small subscriptions, not from selling your data.
Beau launches in the United States in October 2026 on iOS and Android, free with an optional subscription. Founded by Stephen Wood, built by Hank Software, LLC in New York City. heybeau.app
Why now?
Something changed in the last few years: people got off the apps and went outside. Run clubs, dinner parties, leagues, readings, the same four bars on a Thursday. Gay men have been leading this, not following it — queer public life in New York is having a Renaissance. Period.
That produced a problem nobody planned for. The more time you spend in rooms with people, the more often you almost meet someone. He was at the next table. He was ahead of you in the line. He was on the platform, and then the train came, and that was that. Going outside is a machine for generating near-misses, and we are all running it at full tilt.
The apps can't help you here, and it isn't a bug — they're built to answer a different question. Grindr tells you who is near you right now. Hinge tells you who a model thinks you'd like. Neither has a way to find the guy from Tuesday, tall, reading a beaten-up paperback, who got off at Lorimer. The one place that did handle it was a classifieds board that stopped taking personals in 2018, and in the years since, the missed connection has been homeless. It didn't die. People still write them... into comment sections, group chats, subreddits, their own stories at 1am; all places where the odds of the right guy seeing it round to zero.
Beau is the missing piece. Post the near-miss where he's actually likely to be looking: tied to a place, a rough time, and a neighborhood full of men who were also out that night. It doesn't try to replace how you meet people. It assumes you're already doing that, and picks up the part your phone kept dropping.
Keep going outside, boys. Put your phone down when you get there. Dance. Beau will help you find him the next morning.
Quotes
Attributed and cleared for publication. No approval needed.
Beau is the app I wish I’d had the last 15 years living in NYC. I always loved reading Missed Connections... dreaming I’d find myself in one, or that the one I wrote would land me the hunky dude I saw that day.
Guys are sick of the old apps, I think because it never goes anywhere. Beau helps you find that guy who’s already returned a flirty glance.
I’ve been in tech long enough to see the malicious side of the internet first-hand. I’ve had safety front of mind through the entire build. I want my community to trust the Beau app.
Safety and moderation
Nothing opens until both people say yes A post is not a direct channel to whoever wrote it. A man who thinks a post is about him raises his hand; the author decides. Chat unlocks only when the author accepts that claim, and only then can either of them send text or pictures. That isn't a privacy setting someone has to go find — it's the shape of the product, and it can't be switched off.
Moderation is automated first, human second Every photo on a public surface — profiles and posts — passes through a purpose-built machine learning system before it appears, and is rejected outright if it doesn't belong on Beau. Anything that gets past it can be reported by any user, whether that's a profile or a message in a chat. Reports are answered within 24 hours.
Location is computed, never displayed Beau never shows how far away anyone is. There is no radar and no grid. A location belongs to a post, and the man posting chooses how precise it is: an exact spot, a neighborhood, or just the city. Background location is optional, exists only to tell you a post may be about you, is readable only by the code that generates those notifications, is deleted after thirty days, and is never sold to anyone.
Feel free to send over any questions about safety. It's important to me, and I promise to shoot straight with you. press@heybeau.app
Anticipated questions
- How is this different from Grindr or Hinge?
- Beau isn't a grid of faces (or faceless torsos) who may or definitely may not be Looking. It's a way for guys to connect with someone with whom they already had a spark, and they're hoping to make it something real.
- What’s the business model?
- Beau is free at launch. At some point, a low subscription fee will be introduced to keep the lights on, but I'm building this app because I want it to exist, not to dig into the pockets of my own community.
- Why New York first?
- Gotta start somewhere, right? I live in NYC, so it just makes sense to start here. I'll be hoofing it during the first few months to get the word out. This app lives and dies on user density, so I'll be knocking on every door in Hell's Kitchen SOON.
- What happens when someone is harassed?
- The report button is just a tap away. Reports go to a moderation queue and are reviewed within 24 hours.
- Who is “we”? How big is the team?
- I'm building this alone for now, but I'll be happy to have the problem of Beau getting big enough to need a team.
Assets
Ungated. Please credit as noted below.
Logo — full lockup
Download
Logo — wordmark
Download
Spur mark
Download
Founder headshot — Stephen Wood (he/him)
Download
App icon
DownloadScreenshots
Download
Brand colors
- Hot Kiss#fe3f4c
- Poolside#3e8998
Usage notes
- The name is written Beau in running text — never "BEAU" or "beau". The wordmark is drawn in capitals as artwork; that is not a spelling.
- Give the logo clear space on all sides equal to the height of the spur mark, and don’t set it below 24px tall.
- The wordmark may not be recolored outside the supplied colorways, stretched, rotated, or set on a busy background.
- Please don’t add App Store or Google Play badges until the listings are live.
Coverage
Coverage will be listed here following launch.
Press contact
Stephen Wood
We respond within one business day.
Press access to the app is available before launch — write to us and we’ll get you into the beta.