Why a Group of Old Schoolmates Built Bambkuss Active as a Photo-Only Network

Bambkuss Active has a rule that runs against where most social apps are heading. You can’t post videos. Members share photos and nothing else, and before anyone can send a request or message another user, they need at least one photo on their profile. Founder and CEO Oleg Shitsel and co-founder Maksim Khazanov made that call on purpose, and the story of how they got here starts with a few rough sketches on paper and a birthday party in Germany.

The platform, Bambkuss Active, is a social network for people who want to connect by sharing their hobbies, activities and interests. Its motto comes down to three choices: “I do the same!”, “I would like to do the same!” or “I would not do the same!” Registration and chat are free. Premium features are planned but haven’t been released yet, and anyone who wants out can delete their profile immediately and permanently.

The idea is to swap passive scrolling for active, interest-driven networking. You browse photos of what people actually do, find someone into the same thing you are, and reach out. Khazanov has said the goal was to give people a free space to share photos, find common ground and build real connections around what they love doing. The platform launched nationally in the U.S. in September 2026.

Shitsel never planned on running a social network. He was born in 1987 in Khmelnytskyi, Ukraine, and moved to Germany with his family in 1994 when he was seven. School was tough at first, until he learned German and later English. As a teenager he was a big sports fan, especially soccer and table tennis. At 20 he took a job at a car manufacturer in Bremen, and around that time he had a profile on StudiVZ, which was hugely popular in Germany. Building his own platform didn’t cross his mind. He spent about three years studying alongside his job and became a state-certified engineer, but he never got a real chance at a career there. When the pandemic kept him home for weeks, he realized he wanted to be independent and have his own project.

That project had a false start. In 2019, a friend mentioned he’d commissioned a dating platform. Shitsel thought he was joking until he saw the half-finished homepage, and he wanted to be part of it. Then the pandemic hit, Shitsel’s employer had to close, and his friend broke the bad news. The programmer had become seriously ill and couldn’t continue, so the project was over.

Shitsel didn’t want to give up. He told his friend he felt confident he could come up with his own social media platform, since there were already plenty of dating sites, even though he wasn’t sure he could really pull it off. One day, lying in bed, he closed his eyes and pictured what the platform should look like and what it should be about, then sketched the whole thing out on paper.

Around the same time, an old school friend he’d lost touch with came by to visit. He wasn’t happy at his job either. Shitsel invited him to his birthday party, where he saw the drawings and was eager to get involved, bringing graphic design skills with him. The team that came together was made up of former schoolmates, including Khazanov. Back in school, computer projects hadn’t been on any of their minds.

They had to teach themselves much of what came next. The sketches were turned into computer graphics that served as the template for the graphic design, followed by a simulation that became the blueprint for the programming. The team says the early stretch was hard, but every success made it fun enough to keep going. Right now they’re working on desktop and mobile versions of Bambkuss along with marketing, and Shitsel has mentioned that a video platform could be their next project.

His takeaway is that when you put everything you know and everything you’re good at toward something you think is impossible, and you have a small, motivated team around you, you can make it real. Bambkuss started as an idea pictured from bed and sketched on paper, and it still asks new members to do what Shitsel did first, which is put something real on the page before reaching out to anyone.

To see what people are sharing, visit Bambkuss Active.