Maitreya is a Public Benefit Corporation building graduated-trust connection infrastructure for people carrying experiences most platforms can't hold. Its two products, likeu for personal contexts and SlowBurn for professional ones, share one underlying trust model where access deepens as behavior earns it. The AI interviewer Dora handles intake across both products, with human reviewers curating every connection.
Funding
Funding not disclosed
Founders
Product
Problem
Existing social platforms connect people based on shared interests, employers, or demographics, but none were designed for the experiences people can't easily discuss—caregiving at 2am, chronic pain, masking, abuse history, or isolation-by-difference. These platforms force users to perform for a single context, fragmenting identity and deepening loneliness rather than resolving it.
Solution
Maitreya builds graduated-trust connection infrastructure that lets people reveal different depths of themselves to different people, at different times, and in different contexts. The platform operates two surfaces on one trust model: likeu for personal sharing and peer recognition, and SlowBurn for professional collaboration and identity. Access is tiered—users enter at the lowest level and earn deeper connection through sustained engagement, with trust as the only currency. The AI interviewer Dora handles intake through conversation rather than forms, while human reviewers curate every connection. The system is deliberately designed to slow anyone attempting to rush intimacy, applying child-safety principles to an adult-first user base before any minor experience is considered.
Target Audience
Primary users are adults who feel isolated by difference—parents, survivors, neurodivergent adults, and professionals exhausted by social performance—seeking meaningful connection in personal or professional contexts.
Features
- Graduated disclosure model with three access tiers: Garden (entry), Greenhouse (earned), and Workshop (invitation)
- Dora, an AI interviewer that conducts intake through dialogue and surfaces crisis resources when users disclose self-harm or abuse
- Human behavioral review of all reports and connections, with no automated predator detection claimed
- Blocking and reporting tools built into the app, with human review of every report
- Crisis guardrails that alert the full team across all channels with no off switch, plus integration with 988, Crisis Text Line, and RAINN
- Deliberately not built: minor experience, age verification, and proactive CSAM detection—all disclosed transparently as conditions before any under-18 access