Press & Media Kit

By the numbers

Quick facts

Every number below is pulled directly from SMSGO's production database. Fact-checking support is available on request.

Company

SMSGO LLC · 2026

Formed early 2026 · In development since 2024 · Silver Spring, Maryland · Solo founder

Patent Status

USPTO Pending

Provisional utility application filed 2026 · Threshold-driven event coordination engine — auto-confirms events when enough people say YES

Flagship Group · 2026 Season

42 games

Silver Spring Ultimate · A game scheduled every week for 22 straight weeks since March

Messages Delivered

18,700+

Lifetime messages through the platform since July 2025

Flagship Roster

139 joined

Members self-enrolled in Silver Spring Ultimate — every one opted in by texting JOIN themselves

Pricing Model

$0.03 / text

$0.003 per email · Pay-as-you-go · $5 to start · No subscription

Copy-paste ready

Boilerplate, two lengths

Approved for direct use in coverage. No permission needed.

Short · ~50 words

SMSGO is a patent-pending coordination engine that runs over ordinary text messaging. Organizers set a headcount goal; members reply YES from any phone; the moment enough people commit, everyone automatically gets the "It's ON!" message. No app. No member accounts. Just text. Built in Silver Spring, Maryland.

Standard · ~110 words

SMSGO is a patent-pending coordination engine that runs over ordinary text messaging and email. A group organizer sets up an event with a headcount goal — say, "we need 8 players." Members reply YES, NO, or STATUS from any phone, and the moment the goal is reached, every confirmed member automatically receives the "It's ON!" message. Below the goal, the system quietly nudges only the people who haven't answered. The platform also handles wave-based invitations, polls, Best Fit Time and Place planning, automatic waitlists, teams with per-side goals, and pay-as-you-go billing with member chip-ins. No app downloads. No member accounts. Just text. SMSGO was originally built to revive a dying neighborhood Ultimate Frisbee game in Silver Spring, Maryland — and did.

Pitch-ready

Story angles

Six ways into this story, depending on your beat. Each headline is yours to steal, sharpen, or ignore.

Angle 01 / Human interest

"The neighborhood game that died — and the developer who coded it back to life"

A Wednesday-and-Friday pickup Ultimate game ran for years in Silver Spring, then collapsed after the winter of 2023. One player spent eighteen months of evenings and weekends building software to fix the one thing that killed it: nobody knew if enough people would show. This season: 42 games, every week since March. The players are real, local, and quotable.

Angle 02 / Tech & product

"The anti-app: coordination software nobody has to download"

While every startup fights for a home-screen icon, SMSGO went the other way: members never install anything, never create an account, never open a website. The entire member experience is replying to a text. A counter-trend story about meeting people where they already are — including the flip phone crowd and grandparents.

Angle 03 / The mechanism

"Conditional commitment: the patent-pending fix for 'I'll come if others do'"

The core insight is behavioral, not technical: people won't commit to an event unless they know others will. SMSGO's threshold engine lets everyone commit conditionally — YES only becomes a plan when enough YESes exist, and the confirmation fires automatically. USPTO patent pending on the auto-fire mechanism. A clean explainer piece on a small idea with big group-psychology implications.

Angle 04 / Community & loneliness

"Tech that gets people off their phones and onto the field"

Amid coverage of the loneliness epidemic and the decline of third places, here's software whose entire success metric is people physically showing up. No feed, no engagement loop, no time-on-app — the product wins when the phone goes back in the pocket and the game starts. 139 people joined one neighborhood group's roster — every one of them opted in themselves.

Angle 05 / Business

"No subscription, no tiers, no lock-in: a SaaS that charges three cents at a time"

Against the industry's subscription-everything model, SMSGO charges $0.03 per text, $5 minimum to start, nothing when a group goes quiet, and members can chip in toward the group wallet by texting PAY. From the production data: a real game costs $3.01–$6.42 to run — roughly 7¢ per active player. A bootstrapped solo-founder counterpoint to venture-scale pricing playbooks.

Angle 06 / Local

"Built in Silver Spring, for Silver Spring — first"

A Maryland-local angle: the founder, the flagship group, and the field (Nolte Park) are all in Silver Spring. The origin story is walkable. Local players from the roster are available for interviews, and games run weekly — a reporter can watch an event confirm itself in real time and then go watch the game happen.

Founder · Jonathon Lunardi

Jonathon Lunardi started building SMSGO in 2024 after watching his neighborhood Wednesday-and-Friday pickup Ultimate Frisbee game collapse through the winter of 2023, and formed SMSGO LLC in early 2026. A software developer by trade — with a background in education technology, including years at Blackboard — and a Silver Spring resident, he had seen the same coordination failure across every group he belonged to: dwindling attendance, scattered platforms, no way for anyone to commit until everyone else had. He spent eighteen months of evenings and weekends designing and building the threshold-driven coordination engine that brought the game back — this season, Silver Spring Ultimate has played 42 games, with a game on the calendar every week since March. Jonathon runs SMSGO as a solo founder and is available for press interviews, partnership conversations, and live product demonstrations.

linkedin.com/in/lunardi

Founder, in his own words — approved for quotation

"I'm a developer, so I built something. Not because I wanted to start a company — because I was tired of watching a good group of people drift apart over something as solvable as knowing whether enough people wanted to play."

— Jonathon Lunardi, Founder

"Nobody could commit, because nobody knew if anyone else would."

— Jonathon Lunardi, Founder

"I built SMSGO to support my local frisbee group, and other organizers can use the same engine to better activate their own groups. I'm a developer, and I take pride in creating secure, easy-to-use, genuinely useful technology for group coordination."

— Jonathon Lunardi, Founder

"No app. No sign-ups. No noise. Only: is the event ON?"

— SMSGO product tagline

From real users

Quotable highlights

All quotes are from real Silver Spring Ultimate players and SMSGO organizers. Several are available for interviews on request.

"Lunardi the curious fixer moves in to the neighborhood, sees the situation, and starts a 10-year process to produce a responsive tool. Trial and error, yes, but finally perfection! Status: Game On!"

Wes Long · Commissioner emeritus, Silver Spring Ultimate

"Will there be a game tonight or no? How the heck would I know. And since I am the 'coordinator' I show up anyway. When other people show up and a game doesn't make, well, those people may not show up next time. What a mess when all we want to do is have some fun."

Wes Long · on life before SMSGO

"Before SMSGO, I went six months without making it to a single game that reached our 8-player threshold. Now we have a game almost every Wednesday and Friday — it's just that easy."

Jessie Glickenstein · Frisbee player, Silver Spring

"Board game night was always touch-and-go. Half the group would flake last-minute and we'd cancel after I'd already set up. Now we know by 4pm whether we have enough people."

Nick Kruse · Board Game Night organizer, Silver Spring

"I'm more confident the game will occur, and more likely to commit early to encourage others to play."

Mark Richardson · Frisbee player, Silver Spring

"None of those platforms were as seamless or as easy as Jonathon's text bot."

Alex Cronin · Frisbee player

For your story

What we can provide

Everything below is available on request through the inquiry form.

🎙️

Founder interviews

Phone, video, or in person in the DC/Maryland area. Player and organizer interviews can be arranged too.

📱

Live product demo

Watch a real event confirm itself: invitations go out, YESes come in, the threshold fires "It's ON!" — on your own phone if you like.

📊

Production data

Real usage numbers straight from the database — message volumes, per-game costs, season stats — for any fact-checking need.

📷

Photos & video

Founder headshots, photos from Silver Spring Ultimate games, and field access for photographers on game days. Watch the founder origin-story video →

SMSGO Media Kit

Quick facts

Boilerplate, two lengths

Story angles

"The neighborhood game that died — and the developer who coded it back to life"

"The anti-app: coordination software nobody has to download"

"Conditional commitment: the patent-pending fix for 'I'll come if others do'"

"Tech that gets people off their phones and onto the field"

"No subscription, no tiers, no lock-in: a SaaS that charges three cents at a time"

"Built in Silver Spring, for Silver Spring — first"

Quotable highlights