built a stranger chat app from scratch — and what we learned

Sparq’s founders built an anonymous stranger-chat app from scratch after Omegle’s shutdown.

The app matches users by shared interests, and VIP users can also be matched by location.

Their stack used Node.js, Socket.io, Supabase, Vercel, and Render, with JWT for auth and a queue-based matcher.

Early launch issues included backend sleep on Render’s free tier and long waits from low traffic, which they fixed with uptime pings and topic-based opener rooms.