42 posts total
Watch the historic moment when Columbia City Council discussed and voted on food access initiatives. The relevant discussion occurs at minutes 30-32 of the city council meeting.
Today we launched the Community Chat right here on the NeedNoMore platform. We heard you: many pantry visitors aren't heavy app users. We didn't want to make you download yet another messenger and learn a new tool. So we built one — right here, simple and intuitive. We hear again and again that what we created is not just a digital tool, it's a movement. And a movement needs its own space to collaborate. This is your space to share news, stories, ask for feedback, and connect with each other. We're working day and night to improve the platform, and having you here will speed that up so much. Welcome here — all of you. We're so glad you're here. 💚
We went back to food pantry lines with flyers — and this time, some people already knew about us. The reactions when they opened the map and saw pantries marked "Open now" were something else. People excitedly pointed to the screen, saying "there are more pantries that are open right now, and we can see them in real time, we see they are near!" One woman showed us a thick pile of papers she had been using to track pantries — an exhausting, outdated system. We told her: that's exactly why we built NeedNoMore.
Our second live Pantry Portal Demo went incredibly well. We showed all the new features, walked through the step-by-step onboarding process for new pantries, and had a wonderful conversation about new ideas and collaborations in food access in Columbia. The energy in the room was electric. More pantries are getting on board — and we're ready for them.
Columbia City Council officially voted to sign a Memorandum of Understanding for a 6-month pilot with NeedNoMore. This is a historic moment for us — and for food access in Columbia. What started as an idea in September is now becoming a city-backed initiative. We are grateful, humbled, and more energized than ever.
Our LinkedIn page is live! Follow us for project updates, milestones, and conversations about food access and tech for good. Come find us and make friends:
We presented NeedNoMore at the Community Development Committee of the City of Columbia — and the room transformed. Read the full story on LinkedIn, and while you're there — say hi to Svitlana, our founder. She'd love to connect! 👋
After Sumter, our AI agents took on Columbia. Most websites list about 25–30 pantries for Columbia. **Our agents found 70.** 🎉 The map currently covers Columbia itself (not yet West Columbia, Lexington, Cayce, or the suburbs — that's coming). But 70 pantries for one city is a result we're deeply proud of. **Meet the AI agents that made this happen:** 🔍 **The Scanner** runs a quick web scan across your city, finding all mentions of food assistance. 🔄 **The Deduplicator** understands that "street", "str", "Str", and "st" are all the same address — removing duplicates that would confuse our map. 🧠 **The Enricher** goes deep: visits Facebook pages, reads Google Maps reviews, searches forums mentioning each pantry to find correct schedules, eligibility criteria, and any additional data. ✅ **The Verifier** double-checks: is this a real food pantry? A clothes closet? A diaper bank? A blessing box? A community fridge? Any place with free food, clothes, or diapers gets verified and placed on the map. No more long hours reading websites, making calls to dead phone lines, checking spreadsheets. Let AI do the smart work they are born for.
We spent the day at VC Day Greenville, SC — a gathering of founders, investors, and ecosystem builders. The energy was incredible. Founders pitching bold ideas. VCs sharing what they really look for. Panel discussions on scaling, fundraising, and surviving the startup journey. We came to learn, to listen, and to connect. Mission accomplished. Onward. 🚀
We've been selected as "Ignite Founders of the Month." This recognition isn't just about us — it's about everyone who's contributed to this mission. The pantry managers who shared their stories. The neighbors who tested early builds. The mentors who challenged us to think bigger. Thank you for recognizing all the hard work. We won't let you down.
Big news — we've been nominated as one of the top-2 projects from the COLA Launchpad Tech Incubator cohort 2025 to advance to Founder Institute. This is an honor. To be recognized alongside so many talented founders, to have our work validated by people who've seen hundreds of startups — it is truly precious. For our founders, this is a dream coming true. If we're accepted into FI, even more learning is ahead of us. We're ready.
We manually posted our first Surplus Alert — a way for pantries to let the community know when they have extra food available. This is a small but meaningful feature: more food reaching more people, less waste. Read the full story on Facebook:
We met with pantry leaders, nonprofit coordinators, and community partners in Sumter — and it was truly amazing. The coordinator created such a thoughtful space for listening and learning. People shared honest insights about what's happening on the ground: the need for better coordination, keeping information accurate without adding burden to staff, making eligibility clear before people arrive, and sharing surplus food quickly between pantries. What stood out most: despite many dedicated organizations, there's no central coordination point — which means people can fall through the cracks. That's exactly why this work matters. Sumter is now a community pilot. The data is live on the map. Participation is voluntary. The coordinator reached out to 160 members of the Sumter Nonprofit Network. The response has been very positive. Next steps: simple QR codes for pantries to share, optional onboarding for those interested in the portal, and learning together as we go.
We are honored — USC students in the MGMT 479 capstone entrepreneurial consulting class voted to work with NeedNoMore for their semester-long project. This class works with real businesses, consulting them and helping them grow while building their own practical skills. We presented in front of the class, and they chose us. We are so grateful for this partnership with the academic community.
We launched a group of AI agents to scrape the web and find food pantries to put on the map. This didn't happen overnight. We spent a couple of months teaching them — and it was a genuinely tough process. We rebuilt them from scratch multiple times, each time learning what worked and what didn't. It took a lot of trial and error to get them to do precise, reliable work. But it paid off. Sumter, SC was the first city to get an AI-powered map — and the results blew us away: most websites list about 13 pantries for Sumter. Our AI agents found 25.
We're excited to share that we've been accepted into Launchpad Ignite, the next-level program for select founders who are serious about raising capital, scaling their companies, and growing as leaders. One door closes, another one opens. This is our chance to work with experienced mentors, connect with fellow founders, and sharpen our approach to improving food access. More learning ahead. More growth. More impact. Let's go. 🚀
Tonight we introduced NeedNoMore to the Governor — and to many more incredible people — at our booth at the COLA Launchpad Pitch Night Exhibition. A moment we won't forget.
We graduated from COLA Launchpad Tech Incubator tonight — and came home with the award for Best Pitch and Most Improved Project. This award is a true recognition of all the hard work we poured into the project. But even more than the award — we know what we built. And we're just getting started.
We had a great meeting with the Mayor's office — we're moving forward with a pilot memorandum for the City of Columbia. What made it special: seeing the rep from the Office of Business Opportunities who last saw us two weeks ago, when we had almost nothing. Watching her register how much had changed in 14 days made our own progress suddenly visible to us too.
The Pantry Portal is now functioning — and today we showed it live in an online event! Pantry managers can now update hours, post closures, and manage their listings in real time. We walked through the whole experience step by step. The feedback was wonderful. More to come.
A big behind-the-scenes milestone: our provisional patent has been filed. Protecting what we're building so we can focus on what matters — getting it into the hands of the people who need it.
After a few months of conversations, we got the right people on a call with the City of Sumter — and things are escalating in the best possible way. They invited us to come in January and offered to organize a meeting with city officials, food pantries, schools, and nonprofits to present NeedNoMore and explore a citywide pilot. They called it "a meeting." But when half the city is coming… it starts sounding a little like a conference. 🤣 That's how it feels — suddenly the whole ecosystem wants to be in the room.
Today we launched the Food Access Map. It has only a handful of food pantries so far, but the logic is working — and people can already search for food using our map. Real-time. Free. No login required. This is just the beginning.
We met with the City of Columbia's Food Policy Committee and the Office of Business Opportunities to explore how NeedNoMore can support the city's food security initiatives. The discussion focused on collaborative opportunities to improve access to resources and strengthen community connections. City officials expressed enthusiasm for partnering with us to develop solutions that benefit residents in need.
Today we launched a new concept: Neighbors — community members who on their walk verify if pantries are open and confirm addresses from the app. Just 15 seconds of your time can save families hours of searching. Check out our webpage for Neighbors to learn more and join our growing community!
COLA Launchpad wrote an article about NeedNoMore, highlighting our mission to connect communities with food resources.
Today we launched a new concept: Neighbors — community members who on their walk verify if pantries are open and confirm addresses from the app. Just 15 seconds of your time can save families hours of searching. Check out our webpage for Neighbors to learn more and join our growing community!
We're in the spotlight! Boyd Innovation Center published our first interview as part of their COLA Launchpad series. Read about how Yurii and Svitlana are building NeedNoMore to solve food insecurity—turning personal struggle into a tool for community dignity and real-time accuracy.
We got a lot of honest, critical feedback about our first website — and we listened. People found it confusing, unclear, and too long for one pager. So we scrapped it and started over. Our new, fully rebranded website is now live at neednomore.com — clearer, sleek, more structured, and much better at telling the story of why this matters.
Every startup has to start somewhere. For us, it started with $3,000 — our founders' own money. No fancy pitch deck. No investors looking for returns. Just two people who believed enough in this mission to bet on it with their own savings. That $3,000 bought us our first tools, to build our first working product, and begin testing with real food pantries, and most importantly — it bought us time to prove this could work. This is just the beginning.
We handed out flyers at a food pantry. Some people were too exhausted to hope. But then a single mom of four said: "Every time I waste gas going to a closed place... it breaks me. Will I be able to leave a comment in your app?" Then she hugged me. Asked for more flyers to share. Yurii turned to me and said: "She is exactly who you built this for." And he was right. Today I realized — this is not a fantasy. Real people are waiting for this. — Svitlana
We launched our Facebook page! Follow us there for updates, stories, and conversations about food access. Come find us and say hello:
We finally connected with a city government official in Sumter—and what a great conversation! They asked thoughtful questions about our vision and truly understand the community's needs. It was genuinely inspiring to speak with someone so engaged. We're excited about the possibility of building a partnership together.
We finally connected with a city government official in Sumter—and what a great conversation! They asked thoughtful questions about our vision and truly understand the community's needs. It was genuinely inspiring to speak with someone so engaged. We're excited about the possibility of building a partnership together.
We finally connected with a city government official in Sumter—and what a great conversation! They asked thoughtful questions about our vision and truly understand the community's needs. It was genuinely inspiring to speak with someone so engaged. We're excited about the possibility of building a partnership together.
We got our domain name — neednomore.com — and our first website is live! It's just one page. It's simple. But it's there, and it's ours. We even made our new video presentation from our website
A big milestone — we've officially incorporated as a Delaware C-Corp. NeedNoMore, Inc. is now a real company. Not just an idea. Not just a side project. A real organization with a mission to make food access visible. This wasn't just paperwork. It was a commitment. A promise to everyone who's ever struggled to find food that we're in this for the long haul.
Every part of our logo was designed with intention. Together they form the NeedNoMore mark: a symbol of access, dignity, and finding your way out. We're proud of it. And we hope you love it too.
We built the first Pantry Portal mockup and asked real pantry volunteers for feedback. Most are older and not very tech-savvy — so their opinion matters most to us. Their verdict: "It's granny approved." 👵 That might be our favorite feedback ever.
It had to be simple, clear even for immigrant communities, not limited to food, and free to use as a brand. After much searching and many conversations — we found it: NeedNoMore. Simple. Human. Universal. Ours. Our mission is to help people fill in the basics fast, so they have time to regain financial freedom to need no more.
We got in! After weeks of pre-research and validating the idea with pantry users and managers (they all confirmed — the pain is real), we applied to COLA Launchpad. We went through their rigorous selection process and interviews, and we got accepted. 12 weeks of hard work, intensive study, and mentor support ahead. Today we had our first lecture. This is blowing our minds! 🤯
We had been through it — wrong hours, closed doors, wasted trips. We knew others were going through the same every day. So we decided: no one should have to go through this. NeedNoMore was born. It wasn't called NeedNoMore yet. But the vision was already there.