Press
Kinu press kit
Private personal CRM for the people you care about
I build Kinu alone, as my own project at Freshlab, the design and development studio in Velenje, Slovenia, that I run with my brother. Kinu launched on the App Store on 8 July 2026 and on Google Play on 17 July 2026, and is on version 1.1.0, released 28 July 2026. It is self-funded, with no outside investment.
Last updated 4 August 2026.
The story
Friendship is the only close relationship with no institution behind it.
Marriage has a contract. Family has a shared address. Work has a calendar. Friendship has none of that. It survives because somebody remembers, and when the week fills up it is always the thing with no deadline that waits.
Surveys keep putting close friends near the top of what makes a life fulfilling, and keep counting fewer of them. The gap is not desire. It is upkeep.
Kinu is a tool for that upkeep and not much else. It saves what you want to remember about the people who matter and gives you a nudge when it has been a while. No feed, no followers, no streaks, and no AI anywhere in it. That is the whole product.
Quotes
On the record. Attribute to Urh Meza, founder of Kinu. Email me if you want any of these said differently.
Pew asked Americans what makes a fulfilling life, and close friends beat marriage, kids and money. The same surveys count fewer close friends every decade. Nobody I know decided to drop a friend. The upkeep just quietly stopped.
Everyone asks where the AI goes. Nowhere. If a model writes the birthday message for you, what exactly is your friend receiving?
Kinu is built to be opened rarely and closed quickly. Every dashboard in this industry punishes that. I would rather have a small number that means something.
Three angles
Three ways in, depending on what you cover.
Social science and health. The friendship recession has a measurable shape. Americans with no close friends rose from 3% to 12% between 1990 and 2021, and those with three or fewer rose from 27% to 49%. Across 21 European OECD countries, daily in-person contact with friends among young men fell from 46% to 37% between 2015 and 2022.
Consumer tech and product. An app built to be opened less, in a category that measures success in engagement. The free tier caps how many people you can save, ten, and never how often you open the app. Paid adds sync and desktop access. Nothing in the pricing rewards screen time.
European and founder. One person in Velenje, shipping to both app stores, with the privacy promise doing the work a feature list usually does. The OECD and UK figures on this page give a European desk its own numbers instead of borrowed American ones.
Facts
For fact boxes and the bottom of articles.
Boilerplate, 25 words
Kinu is a private personal CRM for the people you care about, made by FRESHLAB d.o.o. in Slovenia. It is available on iOS and Android.
Boilerplate, 70 words
Kinu is a private personal CRM for the people you care about. It is a place to save birthdays, stories, notes and small moments about the handful of people who matter, with a gentle nudge when it has been a while. Notes live on the device and work offline. Kinu Plus adds encrypted sync and desktop access. Made by FRESHLAB d.o.o. in Velenje, Slovenia, free for your first ten people.
Kinu is a personal CRM for your personal life. It is not a sales CRM.
| Name | Kinu |
|---|---|
| Descriptor | Private personal CRM for the people you care about |
| Category | Personal CRM. Listed under Lifestyle on the App Store. |
| Company | FRESHLAB d.o.o. |
| Registered address | Šaleška cesta 2A, 3320 Velenje, Slovenia |
| Founder | Urh Meza |
| First published | 8 July 2026 on the App Store, 17 July 2026 on Google Play |
| Current version | 1.1.0, released 28 July 2026 |
| Platforms | iOS and Android. Desktop access with Kinu Plus. |
| Languages | English and Spanish |
| Pricing | Free for 10 people. Plus is $6.99 a month or $69.99 a year. Lifetime is $149.99, one time. |
| Funding | Self-funded. No outside investment. |
| Ratings | 5.0 from 4 ratings in the Slovenian App Store. No ratings yet in the US storefront. Google Play ratings are not public yet. |
| Wikidata | Q140782434 |
What Kinu does not claim
Read this before writing the privacy paragraph.
I do not publish download, revenue or active-user figures. Kinu launched in July 2026 and the numbers are small enough that any framing of them would mislead. Ask and I will confirm specific figures on background.
Kinu Plus sync is encrypted in transit and at rest. Kinu does not claim to be end-to-end encrypted or zero knowledge, because the sync key is derived from an identifier the server stores. What the server stores and does is the defensible claim; what it could see is not.
Kinu can help you add people from your contacts, and that is where it stops. No calendar, no reading your messages, nothing imported behind you.
There are no AI features anywhere in the product, and private notes are excluded from all processing.
Kinu has no press coverage yet. You would be first, so if something you need is missing from this page, ask and it will be added.
How I check things
In July 2026 I checked ten personal CRM apps against primary sources and found three being reported dead while alive, including one I had published incorrectly myself and then corrected. The App Store omits the year on current-year releases, which is how a three-month-old app reads as a year old.
Assets
Free to use in coverage of Kinu. Charts may be republished online or in print with the credit line: Chart: Kinu, kinu.care
Logo, vectorSVG of the full lockup. Scales to any size for print or screen. A 512 by 512 PNG of the mark alone is also available.
WordmarkPNG of the name set on its own, without the mark.
Founder photoUrh Meza, 3024 by 4032, suitable for print. Ask if you need a different crop.
Friendship research charts
Three charts from the friendship recession research, each sourced to a named study.
App screenshots
The current set is on the store listings: App Store / Google Play
Get in touch
For interviews, review access, a different photo crop, or a figure confirmed on background: urh@kinu.care
Kinu gets built between client work and sleep, so if I reply at 5 AM, that is why.