Why Sonder

n. the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own—populated with their own ambitions, friends, routines, worries and inherited craziness—an epic story that continues invisibly around you like an anthill sprawling deep underground, with elaborate passageways to thousands of other lives that you’ll never know existed, in which you might appear only once, as an extra sipping coffee in the background, as a blur of traffic passing on the highway, as a lighted window at dusk. - John Koenig

We started Sonder because it was apparent to us that today more than ever, people feel isolated and lonely despite our numerous friends on social media. Numerous studies, reports, and ( likely ) your own experience have confirmed this with increasing regularity over recent years.

We want to create a social media app that allows people to open up (which was the original name of the app) and share the prickly, painful, and difficult parts of their lives. We want to build trust through mutual vulnerability and help join society together instead of creating clicks and more norms for what you need to do to be 'liked', or have a good (read: cool) life.

We needed a name for our app that would get at the essence of what users should experience using it, and Jacky suggested sonder. It stuck.

So thanks for the word, John.