Pie, the social app from Bonobos’ founder Andy Dunn, is taking its mission to attach folks in actual life one step additional. On Tuesday, the startup launched a brand new communities function that permits folks to determine extra everlasting properties for his or her social teams on its app, providing a substitute for group texts, Fb Teams, and different applied sciences folks use to remain in contact.
Initially based as an occasions app in Chicago, Pie is backed by buyers together with Forerunner, Lightspeed, Accel, and angels like Twitter co-founder Ev Williams, and the app has grown to round 300,000 customers.
With its newest function, Neighborhood Houses, the corporate now hopes to encourage its customers to hitch communities, the place occasions are the pure end result of these connections, however not essentially the primary draw.
The replace arrives at a time when youthful folks want to make extra connections in the actual world, after so a few years of on-line socializing. As an alternative of solely connecting by social media apps, they’re trying to make use of digital instruments in ways in which cause them to real-world connections.
Pie’s new digital group homepages will provide a spot for organizers and group members to attach and construct relationships past a single occasion, the corporate says.
Every “residence” has its personal group feed and different group administration instruments, like admin and membership controls, a shareable homepage, and occasion planning sources. Nonetheless, anybody can share occasions to the group’s feed, not simply the group’s admins, to permit for extra pure networking. Pie plans to quickly add group chats and one other function that will permit members to submit extra informal bids for connection, like asking if anybody needs to “hang around and craft collectively” or watch the “Love Island reunion,” for instance, with out having a selected plan.
The addition of the Neighborhood Houses follows on different modifications designed to make Pie much less concerning the occasions themselves, and extra concerning the individuals who attend them.
Final December, as an example, Pie modified its exercise feed to showcase who you knew who was going to an occasion, not simply what occasions have been being introduced. After the change, time on the app grew from 2 minutes to 10 minutes, the group discovered. Extra not too long ago, Pie launched a “favorites” function that lets customers construct out their public profiles by including their favourite pursuits.
Dunn says he was impressed to construct the startup after moving from New York to Chicago, the place he initially struggled to seek out group and friendship. On the similar time, a motion round becoming a member of social golf equipment was gaining momentum with Gen Z.
“Run golf equipment, artwork markets, watch events– all this stuff that we’re listening to about by way of the cultural motion in the direction of being collectively once more,” Dunn instructed TechCrunch. “And I felt like if we construct software program for these social golf equipment, we are able to create an setting and an ecosystem the place folks can begin to run into different folks and belong to communities and begin to have deeper connections,” he added, dubbing Pie a type of “Reddit for IRL.”
The corporate has since added Nadya Okamoto, who based a well-liked run membership referred to as Zoomies in New York, as a co-founder and CMO.
“I might say [Pie is] extra like the unique promise of Fb and Reddit — if it wasn’t nameless and poisonous,” she mentioned of the social boards website. “Slightly than main with occasions, which is what so many different nice platforms do, I believe occasions are extra of a product of getting a fantastic community-building ecosystem on the app.”
Whereas Pie is offered wherever, it has extra traction in markets like Chicago, New York, and L.A. at current.
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