Background
We founded the company with the schnaq app. The starting observation came from university life: lectures, webinars and conferences don't really work without genuine interaction. From there grew a platform that connects organisers and audiences — live polls, word clouds, Q&A, whiteboards, gamification and mind maps generated automatically from discussions.
We could have turned it into a classic SaaS product with paywalls and vendor lock-in. We chose a different path.
What it does
schnaq is an open-source platform for interactive events — free to use at schnaq.app, source on github.com/schnaq/schnaq.
- Feature set. Live polls and surveys, word clouds for idea collection, Q&A boxes, whiteboards and creative tools, discussion forums with automatically generated mind maps, feedback boxes, gamification, moderation controls, customisable design templates, embedding in websites and LMS platforms.
- Stack. Clojure on the backend, ClojureScript + re-frame on the frontend — pragmatic, robust, maintainable long-term. Deployment via Vercel and other infra; data lives exclusively on European servers.
- Audience. Schools, universities, education providers, conference organisers, corporate all-hands, webinars, workshops — wherever broadcast-style presentations should turn into real participation.
Impact
Over 1,200 active unique users every month rely on schnaq — and we haven't spent a single marketing euro on it. The community grows through word of mouth in schools, universities and companies looking for a tool that is data-minimal, transparent and free.
Sponsoring & contributing
We've been giving schnaq to the world for years — and we welcome fair support. Sponsoring is genuinely open, whether you're a company, a foundation or an educational provider. Equally welcome: pull requests, translations, use-case reports from a classroom or a conference hall. The code is open, the issues are public.
Why it exists
schnaq isn't "one of our projects" — schnaq is the reason this company exists. We operate, maintain and evolve the app alongside our advisory and engineering work. Anyone who wants to know how we build products can look at what we give away: no vendor lock-in, no data harvesting, no hype — just a tool that does what it should.