While there are plenty of calendar and scheduling apps out there that can help you manage your work schedule and schedule meetings with teammates and colleagues, Howbout is all about finding time to catch up with friends.
The company is banking on the fact that some Gen Z users are very happy to share their entire calendars with friends: Howbout, whose users are mostly under the age of 25, said that more than 75% of users share their entire calendars with at least one friend.
The startup was founded in August 2020 by college best friends Neil Tana, Jake Jenner, and Duncan Cowan. After college, Tana became a corporate lawyer, Jenner an investment banker, and Cowan a software engineer. They found it hard to keep up with each other. Tana always wanted to build something on his own, and persuaded the other two co-founders to join him in creating Howbout.
The company today announced that it has raised $8 million in Series A funding led by Goodwater Capital, with participation from FJ Labs, Sequel and football player Harry Maguire. Existing investors including Boost Capital and Angel Invest also contributed in the round. The company has raised more than $13 million in funding to date.
Image credit: Howbout
“At work, time was a multiplayer experience where I could see other colleagues' schedules and respond accordingly. But in my personal life, time was a single-player existence,” Tana told TechCrunch over the phone.
“There were a lot of apps out there that managed personal productivity, but there wasn't a social graph on top of a social schedule. We wanted to make time social.”
The app lets you see your schedule and the schedules of friends who share their calendars with you. You can also share your availability with a wider range of people without sharing your entire calendar. Also, if you meet with certain people often, you can create a separate group with them.
Howbout lets you schedule events and invite people via a link. People who don't use the app can see the invites, but they'll have to download the app if they want to respond. Tanna said the company is also experimenting with letting users respond on the web, and could switch to that option in the future if it proves beneficial.
Image credit: Howbout
The company also has tools to poll for availability and meeting times, similar to what Doodle and Clockwise offer in the business environment.
Users can add future events like gigs and adventures to their bucket list, or add past events they enjoyed as memories to make them more valuable. There is a group chat for planning every event with friends, so there is no need to use temporary groups on other apps like WhatsApp.
Building a time-centric social product
The 13-employee company has over 4 million monthly active users and over 50 million events created on its app. The company's largest audience base is in the United States, followed by the United Kingdom, Germany, Australia and Canada. With this funding, the company aims to further expand in the U.S. market.
Image credit: Howbout
Haubaut believes that network effect is driven by the Chief Friends Officer, the person who proactively organizes meetups and events within the group. Most people who visit the app are active and add friends, Tana said.
The company has tried various strategies, including branded event activations and subscriptions, but is now focused on growth.
Chi-Hua Chien, co-founder and managing partner at Goodwater Capital, told TechCrunch that Howbout has the opportunity to build a successful social network over time. “Successful social platforms have had a core content type, like Facebook having updates from friends or Musical.ly having looping videos with music. For Howbout, it's time,” he said.
He noted that Gen Z is the perfect target demographic for the app because they're comfortable sharing their calendars and understand that they have no other way to meet and catch up with friends. For some, it may be, but it's unclear whether this is the start of a new social trend. Let's see if shared personal calendars catch on.