“We’re far from the pants,” Andy Dunn, founder of online fashion retailer Bonobos, told TechCrunch. Now, the former CEO is facing a completely different challenge: He wants to help people make friends.
Dunn’s latest adventure, pieis a social application focused on bringing people together in real life.
and $11.5 million Series A salary increase and payment of funds for the event to organizers, pie Although only available in San Francisco and Chicago, there are more than 130,000 active users per month. But increasing users mean that in-person events hosted through the app are also becoming increasingly crowded, making it harder for people to connect.
The young company faces a problem: How do guests know who to talk to if hundreds of people attend the event? How do they make friends when they walk into a busy room surrounded by strangers?
“It’s the beauty of building a startup,” Dunn said. “The solution creates problems.”
Fortunately, this question may not be difficult to find.
Two event organizers on PIE have worked together to build a tool called Sparked Connections, an AI-powered quiz that attempts to predict that people will get along well in a given social event. Pie acquired two founders, Samir Mahafzah and Sam Stubbs, and folded the quiz into certain parties known as “initiated by Pie.”
For example, in PIE’s Coffee with Strangers’ campaign, each person in each RSVP was given a brief personality test, in which case respondents were rated at a ratio of 1 to 5. These tips are different. Are you willing to sacrifice your passionate stability? Do you believe in astrology? Do you pray? Do you vote? Do you have toxic characteristics?
Prior to the event, the quiz algorithm divided respondents into groups of six people, based on who AI believes is most likely to get along with. The six were then placed in a group chat on Pie, where they could get to know each other before the event began.
“We started to pass [ChatGPT]. Then when we get a feedback loop of who connects with who and invites people to stuff, we start to see, why do people turn it on? “Dunn said. “And I think it’s a dark art, without AI turning points, I think it’s almost an unsolvable problem. ”
With the increase focus on It seems frustrating that we need algorithms to help us make friends with Americans. But if you’ve ever connected with new people via Instagram, or dated someone in Bumble, you’ve already put AI into your social life.
