Johnny Sartore

About Johnny Sartore

I’m building Grooply, a social-planning platform designed to make discovering and coordinating your social life actually simple.Like a lot of us, I found myself juggling multiple apps when trying to plan anything: scrolling for what to do, texting screenshots, checking availability, creating polls, reserving tables, splitting expenses… all happening in different tools that never talk to each other. The whole process felt way more complicated than it needed to be.Grooply brings that entire flow into one intuitive experience.If you’re in Austin or work in the social, local, or events space, I’d love to connect.

Experience

1. Founder & CEO

   Grooply App

   Jun 2025 — Present · Austin, TX, US

   Grooply is a social-planning platform designed to make discovering things to do and coordinating with friends actually simple. We’re starting in Austin, where we’re testing the full end-to-end experience: personalized discovery, invites, shared calendars, Groop planning, and real-world coordination — all in one place.My responsibilities include- Leading product vision, UX direction, and the full feature roadmap- Driving early product-market fit through user feedback, testing, and iteration- Overseeing development (using React Native + Supabase) with contractors and technical partners- Building the supply side through scraping, content seeding, and outreach to Austin’s most influential social venues- Developing the two-sided marketplace dynamic for users and local businesses- Creating and executing the go-to-market strategy for Austin (community, partners, ambassadors)- Establishing the early business model: user subscriptions, business visibility tiers, and analytics-driven value- Guiding the long-term strategy toward AI-assisted social planning, discovery agents, and automated logisticsCurrent stage:Closed Beta (Austin) — onboarding users, refining the experience, building relationships with local businesses, and testing growth loops.

Education

• The University of Texas at Austin

  Bachelor's degree

  2016 — 2019

• Texas Tech University

  Bachelor's degree

  2015 — 2016

• The University of Texas at Austin

  Certification

  2016 — 2019