About:
Rental friends are an established service in Japan, and the idea travels well: plenty of people skip a party, a gig or a doctor’s appointment only because they would have to go alone.
Můj kámoš is a Czech version built around trust: verified friends, public places only, no romance and payment after the meetup. Before writing any code, the project tests real demand with a live landing page, a waitlist and three Instagram ads.
Category:
Mobile app concept
Year:
2026
Location:
Prague, Czech Republic
Design framework:
Lean startup, Design thinking
Tools:
Figma, Framer, Google Docs, Claude
Marketplace
Trust & safety
Validation
Brand
The problem:
People skip birthday parties, gigs and even doctor’s appointments simply because they don’t want to go alone. In Japan, paying a vetted person for an hour of company is normal; in Czechia there is no safe, clearly platonic way to do it, and anything similar risks looking like an escort service.
Goal:
Design a trustworthy Czech service for a friend by the hour and validate demand before building it: name, brand, legal guardrails, a live landing page with a waitlist, the app for both sides and ads to drive the test.
My role:
Founder-designer across the whole project: research, naming and trademark checks, legal risk mapping, brand, the Framer landing page with its own domain, 29 app screens in Figma and three coded Instagram ads.
Methods:
•
Desk research
•
Competitor analysis
•
Trademark and domain search
•
Legal risk mapping
•
Persona definition
•
Brand exploration
•
Fake-door landing page
•
Waitlist survey
•
Prototyping in Figma
•
Motion design in code
Research
The idea is borrowed from Japan, so the research started there, then moved to Europe and to the brands that set the visual bar.
/01
Japan, Europe, Germany
Rental friends are a normal service in Japan. I started there: how the services price time, what rules keep them safe and what they never promise. Then I looked at how European friendship apps work and how Swiss and German brands build trust without looking like yet another social app.
/02
Who is this for
Not the lonely stereotype. People who simply do not want to go alone: to a birthday party in a new city, to a doctor’s appointment, to a gig nobody else wants to see. Seniors were deliberately left out as a target group, because they are the most exposed to scams and would need a different safeguarding model.
/03
Legal and safety check
Before designing anything I mapped the risks: the idea itself is not protected, so copying the Japanese model is legal, but confusion with escort services, GDPR for biometric ID checks, platform reporting under DAC7 and the EU Digital Services Act all shape the product. The rules became features: public places only, no romance, payment after the meetup and an SOS button.
Define
Define turned the research into a name, a brand and the rules the product must never break.
/01
A name that fits the store
The working title “Pronajmi si kamaráda” is cut off in App Store search. I checked twenty short candidates against .cz, .app and .com domains, the Czech App Store and the TMview trademark database. “Můj kámoš” won: warm, Czech, and free everywhere.
/02
A poster, not an app template
It took eight rejected rounds to get away from the generic AI look. The final identity is a German-style poster: Barlow Condensed in capitals, black, white and one strawberry pink, photos cut straight into the headline and a vertical navigation rail instead of the usual top bar.
Develop
Develop tested demand before a single line of the app was built.
/01
Validation landing page
Before building the app, a fake-door landing page on mujkamos.cz tests the demand. Every activity shows its length and price, a waitlist form asks who you are (looking for a friend or becoming one), what for and how much you would pay. Answers tell us which activities to launch first.
/02
Micro videos and motion
Each activity on the page plays a short silent loop that only starts when it scrolls into view. Photos move with a subtle parallax and the price list rows fade in. The page stays light: every clip is under 350 kB.
Deliver
Deliver produced the full app for both sides of the marketplace and the ads to launch it.
/01
Member app
Twenty-one screens for the person looking for company: onboarding with the safety rules up front, discovery by activity, verified profiles, booking with public places only, payment held until after the meetup, a live meetup screen with an SOS button, rating and reporting.
/02
Friend app
Eight screens for the supply side: identity check with document, selfie and a short video call, setting your own activities and price, availability, and a dashboard with earnings and new requests to accept or decline.
/03
Instagram ads
Three 16-second vertical ads built in code from real footage and the app UI, so the brand stays identical across web, app and social. Two versions test the demand side, one recruits friends.
Outcome
Where the project is now and what comes next.
/01
What the project shows
A complete, testable startup in one sprint: research, legal groundwork, brand, a live validation page with its own domain, 29 app screens in Figma and three ads ready to run.
/02
What I learned
Safety is the product. Every decision that made the service feel trustworthy – public places, payment after, no seniors as a target – also made the design simpler and the story clearer.
/03
Next steps
Run the two demand ads against each other, recruit the first twenty friends in Prague with the third, and build the app only for the activities people actually sign up for.
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