Member·01
If you're a member,
vouch for the partners who got you through. A single honest vouch is more powerful than a thousand stars. The next family will read it, and it will change what their first month looks like.
Why we exist
We were strangers here, too.
This is what we believe — and what we owe each other.
01The first day
There is a kind of loneliness that only exists in a new country.
It is not the absence of people. It is the absence of the right people. The friend who knows which doctor your kid won't be scared of. The neighbor who's been here long enough to have a pediatrician she actually trusts. The cousin who remembers what it was like to not know how the lease works.
When you move across the world, you don't lose your friends. You just lose the ones who knew where to look for you. And the internet — for all its abundance — has never once known how to introduce you to the person on your street who already learned what you're about to learn the hard way.
We've all been the new one. Standing in a city hall holding a stack of papers in a language we're still half-guessing at. Searching the wrong forum at midnight. Trusting a recommendation from a stranger who never moved a single suitcase in their life.
This is not a small thing. It is the texture of the first year somewhere new — and for many people, the second, the third, the fifth. It is the slow exhaustion of always being the person who has to ask.
A warm window — in a city you are still learning
02 — Our mission
We are building 4expats so the next person doesn't have to ask the internet what to do.
We are building it so they get to ask someone who's been there.
A vouch
The oldest technology
Long before search engines, communities ran on a vouch. One person telling another, "yes, you can trust her." We are bringing it back, structured, in software.
A context
Tailored to who you are
The doctor who works for one family doesn't always work for the next. The right answer depends on your language, your kids, your line of work, your moment. We honor that.
A floor
Raising the floor for everyone
When the recommendations are real, the partners are better, the members are safer, and the community gets quietly, steadily, more humane. That is the entire point.
03 — Responsibility
Every expat owes something to the next expat. It is the only economy a community runs on.
Not money. Not always time. But a vouch — when you find a good doctor, you say so. When you find a school that took your child seriously, you say so. When you find a lawyer who returned every call, you say so. And when you find someone who wasn't good, you say that too.
This is not a transaction. It is a return. Somebody, somewhere, told you where to go. Somebody held the door open. Somebody made a phone call for you. The community is the unbroken chain of people who decided to keep that going.
If you are an expat, you are already a member of this community — whether you know it or not. The only question is whether you'll show up for the next person the way you wish someone had shown up for you.
Partner·02
If you're a partner,
treat every expat in front of you as the person who is going to tell the next one. Your reputation in this community is not built by advertising. It is built by the careful work you already do.
Ambassador·03
If you're an ambassador,
be the person who answers the message. The one who makes the introduction. The one who hosts the first dinner. The community has always run on people like you — we are just giving you a name for it.
04 — Our vow
What we will never do.
- 01 We will never sell your data. Not now. Not when we are bigger. Not for any amount.
- 02 We will never sell rankings. The order in which you see partners is determined by trust, not by who paid us.
- 03 We will never put an advertisement between you and a recommendation.
- 04 We will never optimize your feed for outrage, novelty, or addiction. Quiet is a feature.
- 05 We will never hide a negative review because a partner asked us to.
- 06 We will never forget that you are a person, and not a user.
05 — A note from the founding team
We built this because we wished it had existed.
We are expats. We have moved, and moved again. Between us, we have stood in the kind of waiting rooms where you do not understand what the receptionist just said, holding small children who were depending on us to figure it out.
4expats is the friend each of us needed. It is the table we are setting for the people who are coming next — and for the ones who were us, a year, five years, fifteen years ago.
If you are reading this, you probably know exactly what we mean. Come find us. And then — when you can — turn around and hold the door for the next one.
The founding team
Founder portrait
Save your photo as
Betto + Leo · Miami
Save your photo as
founder-photo.jpg in the same folder to display it here.
The invitation
There is a table being set in Miami.
A chair at it might be yours.
Come find your people. Then turn around and
hold the door open for the next one.