Peel back the person in front of you.

We had been friends for six years. Six years of dinners, group chats, trips — all of it. I genuinely thought I knew everything about Marcus. Then we pulled a Layer 4 question on a random Tuesday night, something about what version of himself he had been pretending to be, and he went quiet for a long moment. What came out of him changed how I see our entire friendship. He had been carrying something for years that he never said out loud. I think he needed someone to ask. I cried on the way home. We talk differently now. Deeper. Like we finally unlocked something neither of us knew was locked.

My mom and I have always been close, but we have never been the type to get into the real stuff. We talk every week — about work, the weather, what my brother is up to. Last Christmas, my cousin pulled out Peelr after dinner. When the question came up about what our parents got right and what they wish had been different, my mom answered first. She talked about her own childhood in a way I had never heard before. She mentioned things her parents never gave her that she tried to give me. I sat there realizing she had been intentionally breaking a cycle I did not even know existed. I held her hand for the rest of the night. We have never been closer.

Daniel and I had been together for three years. We were comfortable in the way that can start to feel a little like sleepwalking. We pulled out Peelr on a Friday night when we had nothing going on, not expecting much. We ended up on the Lovers deck at Layer 5. One of the questions asked what we needed from each other that we had never said out loud. We both sat with that for a while. What came out of Daniel surprised me completely. And what I said surprised myself. We talked for four hours and did not even notice it getting dark. Something shifted that night. A few weeks later he told me it was the most honest he had ever been in a relationship. We got engaged three months after that.

I run culture and people operations at a 40-person startup. Team bonding had always felt forced — everyone showing up, going through the motions, heading back to their desks feeling basically the same. A colleague suggested Peelr at our Q3 offsite and I was skeptical. We pulled up the Coworkers deck at Layer 2 and spent 45 minutes on questions at each table. What happened in that room was unlike anything I had seen in five years of running offsites. Our Head of Engineering talked about why he actually cares about what he builds. Two people on different teams discovered they had nearly identical paths into the industry. By dinner the energy had completely shifted — people were energized in a real way. It was the first offsite where people were still referencing those same conversations three weeks later. We use it every quarter now.