The App / Journey

About a year ago, I had to begin thinking about what I wanted to do for my senior project for my CS degree. There were a ton of ideas floating around, but the one that stuck with me was an idea for an app called Clique. I'd been in a fraternity all of college, and we had so many different events but no way of organizing or looking back on those memories. So I began building my app. I basically just blindly made it without much background on app design, how to actually build and test a product, and went from there.

The goal of the senior project was to build the app, and that's it. Well, I had already built it and had a few weeks left of school, so why not launch it and get people on it? The premise of the app was you have your cliques and the events you go to. Each event, you would have a group chat and then post photos to it that you would see the next day; like a what happened last night sort of summary. So I launched it, spoke at a ton of fraternities and sororities, and then awaited the results. I got a lot of downloads, but people weren't actually using it. Why? Well, because 1. It was too complicated, way too much going on at first, and 2. I didn't fix a problem; I just created a solution for an idea I had.

And that was that. My dream of my senior project taking off and turning into something great disappeared. Now, time for the real world; let's go find a job.

The idea of building an app never left my head, but this one seemed like it had passed. I had moved back to my hometown with my parents and was going to find a job in SF or NYC and move out. But I didn't find a job in either of those places and instead was in Denver. Not what I had planned, but I already have a handful of friends here, and this will be a nice chance to live at home again.

The thing about the handful of friends I did have here was that we'd changed a lot since we last actually hung out. I'd only visited home for the summers, and time spent with old friends diminished each year. Many of us had drifted apart, and it was unlikely we would be back. So I'd encountered a new problem.

"How do you meet new people?"

In college, this was easy; there were new people everywhere, and everybody wanted to make new friends. But this wasn't college. There was no central place to gather and meet people like college had offered. Yes, there were bars, gyms, and sports leagues, but you go to the bar to flirt with people and drink with your buddies, not typically make friends; gyms were a hit or miss, and my gym was a much older population than I was; sports leagues sounded fun but never worked with my schedule.

I was pretty bummed out about this whole thing till I got a call from my college friend, Declan. He'd been living in New York and seemed to have the same problem. Meeting new people wasn't easy. Then another friend called and was having the same issue. Okay, maybe I wasn't the only one experiencing this, but I couldn't just jump to the same conclusion like I did last time, so let me do some actual research.

I began diving into adults finding new friendships, and what I found was shocking; we were at an all-time low number of friends and an all-time high of loneliness. This problem wasn't just affecting me but the general population. The problem is valid, but if people aren't willing to solve it, there's no point in solving it. People were looking for a solution; spending money to go out, trying all sorts of apps without seeing much progress. Now to come up with a solution.

So this is where we are now: the building of Clique. I've seen the current apps on the market, and they are a great start, but not anything worthwhile. We need something to cater to a large population of people similar to how dating apps work but without the transactional feel and meant for more than a one-on-one connection, but instead like a group or Clique.

We plan on launching on February 2nd, so join the waitlist and be a part of something real.