You can only join 1handshake by meeting a member in person. There is no sign-up form and no waitlist. A member takes a selfie with you, and the selfie becomes a QR code that works once and lives for 5 minutes. You scan it with your phone, tell about yourself, and you are in. Every connection in the network starts this way — with two people who were in the same place at the same time.
The problem with online networks
Most professional networks let anyone connect with anyone. That sounds open, but over time it breaks the one thing a network is for. If half of your connections are people you have never met, a “mutual connection” no longer tells you anything. You can't ask them for an intro, they can't vouch for you, and your inbox fills up with messages from strangers.
We think the value of a network is not the number of people in it. It is the number of people in it who would answer when a friend asks.
A network of handshakes
So 1handshake starts from the other end. Instead of collecting contacts, it records meetings. The joint selfie is proof that two people met; the short-lived code makes sure the invite can't be shared or reused. The result is a graph where every line means “these two know each other.”
That has a few consequences we like:
- Bots and fake accounts have no way in. You can't automate a face-to-face meeting.
- Intros mean something again. When you ask to meet someone one handshake away, the request goes through people who really know both sides.
- Growth follows real life. The club grows at meetups, conferences and dinners — wherever people in tech actually meet.
What if I don't know any members?
Then the way in is to go where members are: a meetup, a conference, a coworking space. That is the honest price of a network built on real meetings. To make it easier, the next update brings events: an organizer shows one QR code on the screen, and all guests join the event's graph at once. It is on the roadmap.
Members-only, but not hidden
Joining is closed, but your presence is not. Every member gets a public card at 1handshake.com/@handle — name, role, city, bio and links, plus a plain-text llms.txt version that search engines and AI assistants can read. Your card works for you even outside the club. Your connections and your “i need / i can” stay with members.
Open code, closed data
A network of trust has to be trustworthy itself. The code of 1handshake is public under the AGPL-3.0 license, so anyone can see how the graph, the invites and the intros work. Members' data is not public: it is stored in the EU, and you can export it or delete your account at any time. When you leave, your place in the graph becomes an anonymous ghost 👻, so the intro chains of other people don't break. More on this on the open source page.
The short version
LinkedIn made networking cold. 1handshake tries to make it warm again: you get in by meeting someone, you meet everyone else through someone you both know, and your card is yours. Everyone you need is one handshake away.