At a Glance
One Engineer, a Hostel, and an Idea
Jay was working as a software engineer when he took the solo trip that led to Nomadtable.
He intentionally stayed at hostels to meet other travelers, but found many of them quiet and unsociable. While it was frustrating in the moment, it led to an idea: why not build an app that allows travelers to connect abroad?
He quit his job and gave himself a year to build it.
"I was staying in these hostels to make friends. I didn't want to be alone while traveling. So I thought, hey, it'd be cool to have an app that brings people together."
- Jay, Founder of Nomadtable
Choosing Chat Infrastructure as a Solo Developer
Building Nomadtable as a single developer meant Jay needed to move fast without sacrificing the parts of the app users would depend on most. Rather than building a chat system from scratch, he looked for a provider that would let him ship an MVP with as little friction as possible.
"I looked into building it myself versus using an API. Stream has a good free tier, so I figured I'd try it and get something working quickly."
Integration took about a week, and Jay hasn't migrated to a different chat provider since.
Chat at the Center of the Product
Nomadtable's mission depends on in-app chat.
Users can create or join activities, like grabbing drinks, attending a sports event, or meeting up in a park. Every activity comes with an attached chat room, where the people involved coordinate details like time and location. Beyond activity chats, Nomadtable includes direct messages between nearby travelers and city chats, which are public rooms tied to a specific location where anyone with a trip planned can ask questions and connect with other travelers. Users can also start group chats with friends.
That chat layer has kept expanding. A recent product update added live, time-limited location sharing in any chat, intended for moments when a group is trying to find each other at a crowded meeting point. Group chats also gained polls, so a group can settle on plans with a tap instead of a long back-and-forth.
"I knew chat was going to be integral to the whole app. I wanted it to feel like a good user experience, not some half-working thing. I've seen apps with bad chat experiences, and I didn't want to be like that."
Without chat, coordinating an activity, messaging a nearby traveler, or asking a question in a city would not be possible. The feature underpins nearly everything else in the app.
Moderation That Grew With the Community
Jay expected moderation to be a challenge before Nomadtable ever launched. Any app built around public and semi-public chat rooms needs a plan for handling bad actors, so he built basic filtering, including profanity detection, into the app from day one.
The rest of the moderation system developed after launch. In the early months, Jay reviewed every flagged message himself. As volume grew, he hired virtual assistants to help manage the queue. Nomadtable now relies on Stream AI moderation to handle the bulk of that work, with the two virtual assistants supporting the process.
"When people download the app, they need to have the confidence that it's safe, or they'll go somewhere else."
Monthly text moderations scaled from 145,000 in October 2025 to 4 million in July 2026, a 2,658% increase that tracked the platform's overall growth in messages and users.
The Results
Monthly active users grew 3,225% in just over a year.
Messages sent scaled from 55,000 to 4.2 million over the same period, a 7,536% increase.
Total users now sit at approximately 2 million, with a 70% engagement rate, and the app holds a 4.7 out of 5 rating on the App Store across more than 120,000+ reviews.
All of that growth happened on the same chat infrastructure Nomadtable launched with.
"I haven't had to change much configuration as the user base grows. The core chat functionality and scalability have just held up as we've scaled rapidly."
For a team of three, that stability is critical. It means engineering time goes toward the product rather than maintaining chat infrastructure under load.
What's Next for Nomadtable
Jay plans to keep growing Nomadtable and refining the experience for travelers. He doesn't expect chat to turn into a bigger engineering project as the app expands further.
"Our goal is to keep scaling the way we have been, and ensure our chat experience stays solid."
When we joke about Nomadtable one day reaching one billion users, Jay laughs. He's not sure the world needs that many nomads.
For now, at roughly 2 million users, Nomadtable has time. (And Stream will be ready if Jay changes his mind.)