One Friday evening, Alix van der Worm couldn't stop thinking, “I should do something with someone.”
But she was thinking about finding herself on her own again on a Friday night and heading to the gym. That was when she recently realized it was extremely difficult to try and make plans with people.
“Think about who's around, texting, waiting, research options. It was ridiculous that being home and watching a movie was one tap, but seeing friends was ten steps,” Van der Volm said.
At 25 years old, van derworm is a very Generation Z, and he self-reports that overly connected demographics somehow feel overwhelmingly isolated and alone. Van Der Vorm studied computational neuroscience at Harvard University and later worked in the lab to study how social connections affect mental and physical health.
“The data is tough. Separation can be as physically damaging as what we universally agree with is bad for us,” she said. “It gave me the confidence that working on friendships is not “soft.” It's a real health issue. ”
So in 2020, van derworm began working on Clyx, a social platform that helps users find community events. Five years later, today's app has 50,000 active users purchased tickets for the event, and over 200,000 users are viewing the event. The company currently raises $14 million in the Series A round led by Blitzscaling Ventures, and has attracted participation from other investors including Iqram Magdon-Ismail, co-founder of Venmo and F1-Driver-turned Investor Nico Rosberg.
Alyx van der Vorm
Clyx itself is very easy. Get event data from sites like Ticketmaster and Tiktok and display city events in the event of users who can sign up. It also offers suggestions for places to try, and users can upload contacts to the app to see which events their friends will be doing.
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The company is also building a compatibility engine that encourages users to connect with events. “So instead of stepping into a stranger's room, I already know, 'Hey, Thomas is just like me, we should connect.'
The app even denying connection and reconnection to those who Van der Volm is talking about, reduces the perceived of taking away the “troubling burden of reaching the cold” or as a boring job of cultivating new friendships. Clyx also has a function called a program. Essentially, it is a series of events that guide people to hang out with the same group of people during workshop sessions.
“That repetition is where acquaintances turn into real friends, and it was one of the most exciting things we unfolded,” Vander Volm said.
“People have friends,” she continued. “What they lack is friends nearby, at the same time, at will, at the same time, for the same thing.
Van der Vorm told TechCrunch that she met her major investors through personal connections, including a random encounter with strangers at a coffee shop where she connected with investor friends.
She met Magdon Ismail, co-founder of Benmo. To hear van derworm talk about this, it seems to be the case in “the right place, the right time”.
“Simon Sinek was something else,” she said. “Someone heard me talk about friendship and said I sounded like him and made an intro.”
Clyx currently operates only in Miami and London, with Van Der Vorm aiming to launch the app in New York this month and this year in Sao Paulo. The company also invests heavily in product development, brand and cultural partnerships, and of course it is expanding its team.
Clyx is not the first app to help people get out and meet new people. Posh, Meetup, Dice, and even Eventbrite have done it for years. Bumble has the option of finding friends, and even hinges are trying to get people out there more. But van derworm wants Cleik to stand out.
“My dream is to sit at home and scroll, so it's easy to get out and spend time with friends,” she said. “And if it helps people feel happier, healthier and they really feel like they belong somewhere, that's the impact I want Clique to have.”