After spending more than a decade in New York City, a Cypress woman has returned home with an idea that she hopes will reintroduce the concept of community to Americans, even if in a virtual way.
Nancy Kherlopian is a local resident, mother of three, and Parsons design graduate who came back home to her roots in Cypress after 13 years in the NYC fashion and tech world.
“I’ve been busy navigating the busy Tri-City family circuit,” Kherlopian said this week. “Between our schools, weekend activities, and diverse community events, I realized that setting up a simple get-together has become completely overwhelming,” she said.
“The pressure of coordinating schedules, waiting on RSVPs, and managing chaotic group texts turns what should be a spontaneous hangout into an exhausting chore,” Kherlopian said.
So off goes the flash bulb inside her brain and Kherlopian comes up with an idea that she hopes will make a difference.
It’s called Vibes4Tribes and to create community, all you really need is a vibe and a tribe.
“We live in a culture of instant gratification where ordering an item on Amazon takes one click, yet seeing our own friends feels like a logistical nightmare. I spent the last couple of years building a solution to make hanging out as easy as the tap of a button,” she said.
“It is a private social connector platform designed specifically to bypass group chat chaos and empower people to hang out on a whim. You simply create a casual “vibe,” share it with your tribes, and let them join instantly if they’re free.
“A major pillar of our launch is driving organic foot traffic back into our local economy. We are actively collaborating with small businesses across the Tri-City area, turning local cafes, restaurants, and venues into featured “Vibes” so our neighbors can easily discover, gather at, and support the incredible spaces right in our own backyard.
“We are launching at a critical turning point. Digital connection has peaked, but social isolation is at an all-time high. In transitioning to a more intentional life here in SoCal, I kept seeing brilliant people living like “digital ghosts”—connected by pixels but isolated in person.
“We just launched our private, invite-only beta pilot right here in the community. Our platform ditches public feeds entirely and replaces them with an intuitive, one-tap design built purely to get us off our phones and back into the moment.”
“We’re trying to just get people to hang out,” she said.
“People are having a hard time making eye contact today,” she said, “much less having a discussion or a conversation.”
She said there is now a term to describe the way digital devices having captured our attention. “They call it the dead stare,” she said, when two people look at each other and don’ really quite manage to establish solid eye contact with each other.
“Instead of comparing each other’s lives, we’re trying to get people to build communities,” she said.
Anyone with a “vibe,” which is little more than a good idea for a “hangout,” can then notify everyone in the “tribe,” which includes family, friends, coworkers, etc.
Kherlopian said the software is now live across America and anyone with a phone can simply download the app Vibes4Tribes and be among the first to move toward what she hopes will be a new era in wholesome community engagement, better known in the digital age is “Vibes4Tribes.”