Why we are building Riff

Jarric, Chris, Kyle, Derek, and Kyla

May 2026 · 2 min read

Riff is a club-driven writing platform for friends. Why clubs? Because doing stuff with friends is good times, and clubs are the social infrastructure to keep the good times spinning (like a record, baby, right round). If you want to tell more stories and be creative with your friends, you should start a write club.

We accidentally started a write club after our Friendsgiving in 2024. The 5 of us enjoy writing and being creative, but never felt like public blogging or email newsletters was our jam. So we started writing stories and essays in Google Docs, picked a due date, and shared the docs on that date. Other friends found out what we were doing and wanted in. We're onto something.

Our write club has exchanged over 60 pieces and nearly 100,000 words, and we're still going strong. The original 5 of us are now building Riff. This is a side project, a passion project, a scratch-your-own-itch project. There is a part of us that thinks this could never catch on — why start a club and write essays when you could just text the group chat? Why not try and get your writing published on Medium or monetized on Substack?

But there's a part of us that thinks maybe there are people and friend groups out there like us. Who just want to write with their friends because it's private and creative and fun. Who think that a writing experience that feels more like starting a garage band, storytelling around the campfire, a kickback at the homie's place, a literary mosh pit with friends is their jam. This is for you.

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