07/04/2026
This probably isn’t news to you: modern-day companies exist in what’s known as the attention economy.
The product looks free on the surface, but really, we are the product. We’ve accepted this.
Our time, our habits, where we click, what we buy; it all gets packaged up and sold on. Not because anyone’s evil, just because that’s the model. It works. It scales. It prints money.
But it also shapes our behavior in ways most of us don’t really think about.
Before Town, I (left) spent time inside that machine.
I worked at Amazon and saw just how optimised everything is. Every pixel, every flow, every recommendation. Designed to keep you moving, buying, staying.
It’s genuinely impressive, built by PhDs and some of the smartest minds on the planet.
But at some point it started to feel like…there has to be a better way to do this. Not necessarily bigger. Just better.
At the same time, Aled (right) was on the other side.
Travelling a lot, landing in new cities, trying to find good spots and ending up doing what we all do. Scrolling. Tripadvisor. Google. TikTok. Back to Google again.
Endless options, but no clear signal stood out.
What he actually wanted was simple: just show me the good stuff. The places people actually rate. The ones worth going out of your way for.
Somewhere in the middle of those two things, Town started to take shape.
Not as some big “we’re going to change everything” idea.
Just a quiet fix to a very normal problem.
Make it easier to support local businesses.
Make it easier to discover places that are actually good.
And give people something back for doing it.
Town isn’t trying to be a silver bullet.
It’s not going to magically replace big platforms or completely change how people spend overnight.
What it does do is remove a bit of friction.
You open the app, find a genuinely good local spot, go there, spend like you normally would and you get rewarded for it.
No mental gymnastics or soul-sucking algorithms.
The model behind it matters as well.
Town is funded by subscriptions from businesses, not by selling your attention.
So you’re not the product here.
Your custom is.
