I joined trustroot’s team last year. It was very frustrating because many of them were thinking small and had no drive to compete with couchsurf. Goals were rarely ever met on time and most of them were actually never met. The frustrating part was that they had a great working app, however they did not seem interested in pushing it to the masses. I am wondering how you guys will deliver? Because right now there literally is no one competing with couchsurf. And we all know, people deserve better than how they’ve treated and ostracized members of that community.
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Hello @gd69 and welcome to the forum. I hope you don’t mind me shortening your title just a tad 
Well, we have nearly 140 volunteers working on building the app at the moment, and many are working more than they would for a full-time job. Over the past 16 months we have literally started from zero and built something that is already usable for surfing/hosting and getting better every day. You’ve probably read all the essays laid out on Couchers.org, but if not, give them a good read, because all of us working on the project are very much aligned with the plan to build the alternative you’re looking for.
Since some volunteers that work with us have volunteered with or help with Trustroots to some extent we can confidently say that our team works differently. We have a singular vision to build something that has all the same features as Couchsurfing and improves in areas of safety and user experience, for example. I’m sure others from the team can weigh in on this, too.
I’d also invite you to join our online events so you can meet volunteers, contributors, and users in person. I think you’ll find we are VERY confident 
Speaking for myself here but I’m nearly 100% sure this project will not only be completed, but be very successful – if not more successful than CS – in the long term.
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Ok Emily, you talk a big game, and I mean that in a good way. That confidence is exactly what we need. Is there some sort of roadmap I can check out?
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The public roadmap is on our internal roadmap 
Right now we have Updates from the development team on the Couchers blog.
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Ahaha thank you! 
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Hi @gd69
Thank you for your question and welcome to the forum. I am Poovan, the Head of Marketing at Couchers.org.
I feel @Emily has covered about what we’ve set out to do, why and how. Another thing I would like to add is that we listen attentively to the community. This is built into the fabric of our team. We got to this point by listening.
As well as online events, you can join our Town Hall on the fourth Sunday of every month.
As @Nolo pointed out, we are gathering everything for the road map (or a similar document) to make it easier for everyone to access. As soon as it is ready, we’ll update our website and share it in the forum.
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So it’s been some time since this post. Awesome to see the growth so far. Very refreshing to see a community actually go for it, be bold and say what they exactly what everyone wants needs… a community bigger and better than couchsurf!
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I’m excited to see how many people are on Couchers in the US considering it’s the newest of the platforms. The Couchers team have done a good job getting the word out.
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As people are less afraid of Covid, there’s more traveling and I’m not the only one searching for a cs alternative.
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Host focused. User-focused. Responsiveness to surfer safety and not hiding crimes. Profile safety and communication. Have people to talk to! or chat. I don’t know if you can get volunteer help desk support. Listen to users, be willing to have egg on your face instead of blood on your hands.
C S dot com encourages and markets exclusively to freeloaders and there are vids all over youtube on how to manipulate people for “free” housing. There will always be more of them than the kinds of interesting people I want to support.
I hosted a gamer from the Eastern EU who wanted to see all the landmarks from his favorite game and we walked all over San Francisco. A woman who had just broken up with her boyfriend when he backed out of their planned trip here and drove cross country. We had tea during an eclipse. An American professor who’d been out of the country for 3 years coming home to the Bay Area.
The rest must be ruthlessly filtered out. Boundaries and rules. Things that show your home is not a hotel and should not feel like one. A surfer who doesn’t like my rules will eliminate themselves.
Ruthless expulsion and police reports for assaults on surfers and hosts. Not hidden from members.
You have to be willing to not be nice with a review. BUT women have to be safe enough to report without a vindictive man doxxing her and threatening assault. It’s ingrained in women to say a host wasn’t “that bad” and was OK. It takes enormous courage and risks that a woman can’t afford to take to report a bad experience or crime.
My philosophy is to host people doing interesting and socially positive and creative projects. Sometimes it’s kismet. I’ve met amazing people and want to do that again but I loathe C S dot com. I’ve looked into all the others. The process and the tech is slow and over the years, there still aren’t enough people. That’s why I’m excited to be here. So whatever C S dot com does, do the opposite.
Unfortunately There are cases where women have abused that power of cancelling someone for “assault” and cancelled innocent men. There are two sides of the coin please don’t forget that.