Tell us about your idea – what, how, why?

YOLD is an initiative based in Frankfurt that brings people of different generations together — through personal matches, shared interests, and community events. But the name says more than that: YOLD stands for „Young to Old“ — not two separate groups facing each other, but the whole spectrum of life phases in between. And that’s really the heart of what we’re building: an ecosystem for cooperation across that entire spectrum, not just a tool that matches people once and lets them go.

We started YOLD because we noticed something simple but important — as a society, we’re losing the everyday spaces where different generations used to naturally meet. Outside of family, people barely talk with each other across ages anymore, only about each other. And with that, we’re losing a lot of mutual understanding, shared knowledge, and honestly, a lot of joy too.

So what we’re building is a space to bring that back — one where a 20-year-old and a 70-year-old aren’t seen as belonging to two separate worlds with nothing to offer each other, but as two people who each carry their own skills, perspectives, and experience, worth exchanging. It’s about cooperation, mutual learning, and actively breaking down the stereotypes that keep generations apart.

Right now, the way we make that happen is through YOLD Connect, our digital platform and current main entry point: people can offer their knowledge and register as mentors, or simply look to meet others locally, matched around shared interests — cooking, sport, music, or just a coffee and a real conversation, with no age category standing in the way. On top of that, we bring the whole community together once a month at an in-person event, so people don’t just meet their one match, they get to know the wider network too. And we’re not stopping there — we’re actively expanding into cultural programs, joint events, and discussion formats, so YOLD becomes more than a matching tool and grows into a genuine ecosystem where every generation has multiple ways to connect, collaborate, and learn from one another.

What motivated you to start your own project/company?

It started with a simple observation: our lives rarely intersect across generations anymore. Beyond family, people in very different life phases barely meet — not because they don’t have anything to offer each other, but because there’s rarely a reason or a space for it to happen. We wanted to create that space, so experience, curiosity, and new perspectives don’t stay locked in separate worlds.

On top of that, there is also a societal and economic dimension to it: loneliness, isolation and demographic change.

How did your Impact Journey begin?

YOLD grew out of the Deutschlandstipendium, where Simon first started shaping the idea while studying psychology at Goethe University. What began as a concept turned into a real platform, YOLD Connect, where people could register as mentors or find others locally to meet — and it later grew to include our monthly community events, seven of which we’ve organized so far. All of this kept growing well before the Social Impact Award came into the picture. By the time we applied, we already had over 150 registered members, more than 40 matched tandems, and press coverage including two features in the FAZ, Journal Frankfurt, the FNP, and Stadt Frankfurt im Blick. Of course we are very happy about that!  

What are you most looking forward to / what have you been most excited about so far in the incubation process?

Making it to the Top 15 and heading to the finale in Berlin has been a huge confidence boost. What excites us most now is using the incubation program — the mentor access, the expert pool, the cohort exchange with SIA Austria — to turn YOLD from a growing local project into the age-inclusive ecosystem we actually want to build. But also: Meeting all the other young inspired people! The community that we experience here is very special and supportive! It’s great talking to other young founders who understand the passion but also the hustle when being a social entrepreneur. 

If you had all the resources in the world, what would you want to change in the world?

We’d want society to stop emphasizing what separates life phases and start recognizing what each one brings. Every stage of life carries its own skills, perspectives, and experience — no single viewpoint belongs to a single age. With real resources, we’d build the infrastructure for people at every life stage to exchange, network, and actually collaborate with each other, not just coexist.

What has been the biggest challenge so far?

Balance. Even with 150+ registrations and 40+ tandems matched, more than two-thirds of our members are over 55 — the older generation showed up ready and motivated, but young people are still underrepresented. Growing a two-sided network means you can’t let one side outpace the other, and convincing young people in Frankfurt that they have just as much to gain from these connections as older members has been our hardest ongoing task.

What is your big vision? Where do you see your project in 10 years?

One life. Many phases. In ten years, we want YOLD to be a real age-inclusive network — a place where every generation contributes according to its own abilities and interests, where exchange, networking, and actual collaboration across life phases is normal, not novel. Not one generation teaching another, but all of them working alongside each other, each bringing something the others don’t have.

What does success mean to you?

Success is a network where life phase stops being the category that defines what you can offer or where you belong — where a 19-year-old and a 75-year-old can be genuine collaborators, not just „mentor and mentee.“ If YOLD becomes the infrastructure that makes that normal in Frankfurt and beyond, we’ve done what we set out to do.

Your catchphrase:

Mehr gemeinsam. Gemeinsam mehr.
More together. Together more.