BETWIXT


BETWIXT creates safe third spaces for people in transition—international students, new immigrants, global movers—who feel isolated between cultures. Through online tools and offline gathering places, we turn loneliness into connection, helping you find acceptance, belonging, and familiar faces in unfamiliar places.




Ying Ying

MFA Design: Design as Entrepreneur
School of Visual Arts
Class of 2026

Chair: Randy Hunt
Advisor: Xiaosu Sun
The Story

In my sophomore year, I stayed at a friend's house during the pandemic. Her father had spent over twenty years in the United States — working, waiting, repaying loans — without legal status. After two decades, he finally bought a small house. "America" became a street address on a mailbox.

I kept thinking about him. Not because his story was unusual — but because it felt familiar.
The waiting. The proving.
The feeling of living somewhere without ever fully arriving.

In some ways, even as a legal international student at the time, I felt the same as him. I didn’t know who to ask about my visa. I didn’t know how to find housing that wouldn’t take advantage of me. I had questions Google couldn’t answer, and problems my school wasn’t built to solve.

I wasn’t struggling because I lacked capability. I was struggling because there was nowhere designed to support this experience.

The more I talked to people around me, the more I realized this wasn’t just my experience. More than 50 million immigrants live in the United States — the highest number in U.S. history. Add 1.58 million international students, and you have a generation of people living between two worlds, navigating systems that were never designed for them.

The challenge isn’t just practical. It’s emotional. Nearly two-thirds of international students report loneliness within the first months of arrival. The need to belong is fundamental — but for people in transition, belonging is never fixed. It is something constantly negotiated, always in motion.

Yet most platforms treat belonging as a destination.
BETWIXT treats it as something you are still becoming.

Background 
&
Cultural RelevanceThe experience of living between cultures is not new — but the scale and visibility of it today is unprecedented. Global mobility has created a growing population of people who are constantly in transition: international students, immigrants, and global workers moving across borders, systems, and identities.

Yet while movement has become normalized, the experience of being “in-between” remains largely unsupported. Most existing systems are designed around clear states — arrival or departure, legal or illegal, student or professional. They recognize milestones, but not the time in between.

Sociologist Ray Oldenburg describes the idea of the “third place” — informal spaces beyond home and work where people gather, connect, and build a sense of belonging. These spaces are essential to social life, yet they are often rooted in stability and local familiarity. For people in transition, access to such spaces is limited, fragmented, or entirely absent.

At the same time, anthropological concepts like liminality describe the state of being “in-between” — a period where individuals are no longer who they were, but not yet who they will become. For migrants, this condition is not temporary, but ongoing. It is lived through visa timelines, cultural negotiation, language shifts, and emotional uncertainty.

Despite this, most platforms and services continue to treat belonging as a fixed outcome — something to be achieved once one has fully “arrived.” This overlooks the reality that for many people, belonging is not a destination, but a continuous process shaped by movement, adaptation, and connection.

BETWIXT responds to this gap by rethinking belonging not as a place, but as an experience that unfolds over time. By creating both online and offline third spaces for people in transition, it supports the emotional and social dimensions of migration — transforming isolation into connection, and unfamiliar environments into shared ground.

Value Proposition BETWIXT addresses a structural gap that no existing platform fully solves. Scattered group chats, overloaded university advisors, and one-off community events don't match the depth of what people in transition actually need — consistent support, real connections, and resources that grow with them.

BETWIXT offers three things at once: practical resources (visa guides, housing tips, career support), human connection (mentorship, events, community), and a space that evolves as users settle in. The freemium model means anyone can join with zero barrier. The tier system means the platform grows with the user — from newly arrived to fully established.

Users don't just consume the platform. Over time, they become part of how it works — as mentors, event hosts, and community builders. This is what makes BETWIXT different: it turns the people who were once helped into the people who help next.


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Competition
The landscape includes general social platforms like Meetup and Bumble BFF, expat-focused networks like InterNations, UGC platforms like Xiaohongshu (RedNote), and university international student offices. Each addresses part of the problem — but none addresses all of it.

Meetup connects people through interest-based events, but has no focus on cultural transition or practical resources. Bumble BFF offers one-on-one matching, but the dating app format doesn't translate well to community building. InterNations serves expats globally, but skews toward established professionals and lacks the mentorship and career support that people in transition actually need. University international offices are often overloaded, reactive, and limited to enrolled students only.

Xiaohongshu has become an unexpected resource for international students — filled with user-generated guides on visas, housing, and life in a new country. But it's a content platform, not a community platform. Information is scattered, unverified, and one-directional. There's no mentorship, no events, no real human connection built into the experience.

What none of them offer is what BETWIXT is built around: a platform that combines community, practical resources, mentorship, and physical space — designed specifically for people in cultural transition, at every stage of that transition.




Market Size
There are 1.58 million international students in the U.S. alone. Add 50.2 million immigrants, and the total addressable market is one of the largest underserved communities in the country.Starting with NYC — home to over 135,000 international students — BETWIXT targets the most concentrated and diverse entry point first, then expands to Boston, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Chicago, before scaling globally.

Year one revenue projection: $150,000+ from C2C subscriptions and B2B partnerships.

Testing & Experiments To understand the real experience of living in-between, a survey of 100 people in cultural transition was conducted first — international students, new immigrants, and global professionals navigating life in a new country. From those responses, 9 participants were selected for in-depth interviews, each representing a different stage and pathway of migration.

The conversations revealed consistent themes: the anxiety of legal status uncertainty, the emotional cost of constant self-translation, and the absence of trusted, peer-based support systems. No existing platform addressed all three simultaneously.

Future testing would include a closed beta launch with international student communities at NYC universities, measuring retention, upgrade conversion, and — most importantly — whether users report a genuine sense of belonging within the first 30 days.


"The greatest cost of staying in the U.S. isn't money or time — it's living under the constant shadow of status. Without citizenship, every decision feels suspended, never fully secure." — a finance professional, New York

"For me, migration is a chain of verbs: waiting, struggling, sacrificing. Nouns are just labels, but verbs capture the reality I live every single day." — a finance professional, New York

"Belonging is never fixed. It depends on my state of being. In good times, I can feel I belong here for a moment. In times of setback, I'm quickly pushed back to the margins." — a visa applicant, New York

"Migration doesn't mean leaving one place behind — it means stepping into a new series of negotiations: career, family, and identity." — a creative professional, preparing to migrate

"Home isn't defined by geography; home is wherever my mother is." — a creative professional, preparing to migrate

"Even with a green card in my pocket, I feel migration is unfinished — it keeps unfolding in daily negotiations of culture and identity." — a designer, New York

"Migration is in my accent, in the words I forget, in the silences I carry." — a designer, New York

"I'm always waiting — waiting for graduation, waiting for work, waiting for the card." — a graduate student, United States

"A successful migration isn't just about the green card — it's about stability, a home, and a life that feels secure." — a graduate student, United States


Business Model
 BETWIXT runs on a freemium model with three paid tiers — $6.99, $49.99, and $99.99 — priced to reflect where users are in their transition, not just what features they need. The platform combines online community with offline spaces (OMO model), built around six core features: community feed, events, group chat, mentorship, newcomer guide, and career matching. It launches in New York City, anchored in university communities, then expands to Boston, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Chicago. Growth is driven by a referral XP system and user-generated content — the community itself becomes the marketing engine. Revenue comes from two sides: C2C subscriptions as the foundation, and B2B partnerships with universities, employers, and service providers as the growth layer. The more people join, the more resources exist for the next person who arrives. Year one target: $65,000+.


Bibliography
 Ahmed, Sara. The Cultural Politics of Emotion. Edinburgh University Press, 2004. edinburghuniversitypress.com/the-cultural-politics-of-emotion-772.html

Appadurai, Arjun. Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. University of Minnesota Press, 1996.

Bhabha, Homi K. The Location of Culture. Routledge, 1994.

Boundless. "International Students Studying in the United States: Trends and Impacts 2025." Boundless, 2025, www.boundless.com/research-reports/international-students-studying-in-the-united-states-trends-and-impacts. Accessed 13 Apr. 2026.

Girmay, M. "Social Isolation, Loneliness, and Mental and Emotional Well-being among International Students in the United States." International Journal of Translational Medical Research and Public Health, 2023, ijtmrph.org/social-isolation-loneliness-and-mental-and-emotional-well-being-among-international-students-in-the-united-states. Accessed 13 Apr. 2026.

Institute of International Education. "Open Doors 2025 Press Release." IIE, 17 Nov. 2025, www.iie.org/news/open-doors-2025-press-release. Accessed 13 Apr. 2026.

Lahiri, Jhumpa. The Namesake. Houghton Mifflin, 2003.

Migration Policy Institute. "Frequently Requested Statistics on Immigrants and Immigration in the United States." migrationpolicy.org, 2024, www.migrationpolicy.org/article/frequently-requested-statistics-immigrants-and-immigration-united-states. Accessed 13 Apr. 2026.

Nelson, Maggie. The Argonauts. Graywolf Press, 2015.

Penn State Center for Collegiate Mental Health. "International Students Are More Socially Isolated than Domestic Students, and the Gap Is Growing After COVID-19." CCMH, 7 Sept. 2023, ccmh.psu.edu/index.php?option=com_dailyplanetblog&view=entry&year=2023&month=09&day=07&id=44. Accessed 13 Apr. 2026.

Pisarevskaya, A., et al. "The Cultural Identity of First-Generation Adult Immigrants: A Meta-analysis." Self and Identity, vol. 23, no. 4, 2024, pp. 450–483, www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15298868.2024.2399559. Accessed 13 Apr. 2026.

Tandfonline. "Mental Health and Wellbeing of International Students in Australia: A Systematic Review." Journal of Mental Health, 2024, www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09638237.2024.2390393. Accessed 13 Apr. 2026.

Vuong, Ocean. On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous. Penguin Press, 2019.

Wang, Xinyuan. Social Media in Industrial China. UCL Press, 2016.


SME interviews

Anonymous [visa applicant, New York]. Personal interview. 2025.

Anonymous [creative professional, preparing to migrate]. Personal interview. 2025.

Anonymous [designer, New York]. Personal interview. 2025.

Anonymous [graduate student, United States]. Personal interview. 2025.



Between two worlds, you don't always know where you belong. 

Over 1 million international students arrive in the U.S. every year. Nearly two-thirds report loneliness within the first months, and 60-65% say it affects their mental health and academic performance. The challenges go beyond loneliness: visa uncertainty, housing scams, career systems not built for international candidates, the exhaustion of explaining yourself everywhere you go. Yet the systems built to help them fall short. Scattered group chats. Overloaded advisors. One-off events. None of it stays with you as your life here changes. What's missing isn't information. It's people. The ones who have already been through it. That knowledge exists inside the community. It just has no home. Named after the feeling of existing in-between, BETWIXT turns that space into a place, with real tools, real people, and real belonging. 

Between two worlds, you find a third.



1. Branding System
The logo carries a subtle smile — a direct response to how users feel when they first arrive: vulnerable, unsure, looking for a sign that they are welcome. The color palette was drawn from photographs collected from community members of their most "in-between" moments. What emerged was the palette of dusk — colors that sit between day and night, never quite settled. Just like the experience of living between two worlds.



2. The Language of In-Between
Being in-between is not being lost. It is becoming. Standing at the threshold of two worlds, that moment of pause is where you are most honestly yourself. BETWIXT doesn't ask you to choose a side. It stands with you in the middle — until you find where you belong.




3. Landing page Vedio



4. what you get



5. UGC Community





6. Events



7. Find Your People



8. Membership