Not Savvy yet? Get our latest iOS version.

We introduced Savvy’s beta version to the public three months ago this week. We knew this was going to be an adventure, and love all of you for being a part of the ride.

We’ve benefited greatly from hearing about experiences others in startup land have had, and we hope our story can help some of you. Or, if you’re just curious about where we’ve been, here’s a look behind the scenes:

Opening the Starting Gates

We’ve seen all sorts of crazy stories about making launch day a success, but we strategically decided to fly low on launching our public beta because we knew Savvy needed more development and testing before we were ready to grow. But, things don’t always go as you plan. For us,

Launching felt like jumping into the Hunger Games.

It was a free-for-all at first. We were suddenly thrown into a world of likes, shares, tweets, and (of course) Savvy invitations.

We were picked up by the Product Hunt community just a few hours after sneaking in to the App Store. Despite our best intentions, we soon had over 750 visits to our landing page, with roughly 18% converting to downloads. Product Hunt’s direct link to the App Store is likely responsible for a good chunk more, but we missed out on capturing stats for those links. We were also featured by ListHunt the next day as an “incredibly awesome new app”. It was a lot to take in for only the first 3 days and no actual marketing.

We expected the wave of tech-enthusiasts to be fleeting — and to be sure, we saw around 1/3 of users from that first week come in, check it out, and bounce as we expected — but the supermajority of folks ended up sticking around and inviting people to check Savvy out.

In fact, since getting 1.0 into the App Store in September, we’ve seen some solid patterns emerging:

• Savvy is Bringing People Together — Savvy is averaging 5 new events created and 18 new invitations sent out per day. That’s nothing if you’re a huge company, but for building our first product, it’s a pretty awesome feeling. What’s even better: Savvy invitations have a 70% RSVP rate! (Our user “success” metric.)
• Inherent Network Effects FTW — Every invitation that goes out is an opportunity for someone to meet Savvy for the first time: 61% of invitations go to people who have not yet created an account, and 42% of new users come from invitations to events, more than any other source.
• People Seem to Like This Thing We Built — About 36% of users create a gathering on Savvy and 48% start chatting. Our weekly active user base consistently hovers around 35%.

Of course, anything less than 100% makes you focus on what you’re doing wrong, but these stats keep us motivated and let us know we’re on the right track.

Listening to our Users

The goals with launching 1.0 as early as we did was two-fold:

1. Learn how our system performed with the training wheels off (we’ll give it an A-), and
2. Determine which of our anticipated users would be the most active to help guide our product development and marketing.

Since launching, we’ve received an enormous amount of feedback from the Savvy community. Big-ups to everyone who has been helping us refine the experience. You’re helping us tackle both goals simultaneously.

Here are some of the big features we’ve added by popular demand over the last three months:

• Calendar Syncing (Brand New!): Now you can link Savvy to your “source of truth” calendar. As details for the event shape up, Savvy pushes updates straight to your calendar. H/T to our buddies at TimeKit for rolling out the first layer.
• Trending Events: Need a little inspiration to rally your troops? Our new trending section shows select upcoming events in SF/Bay, LA, Chi-town, NYC, and Boston.
• Quicker Onboarding: We were seeing around 10% of new downloads getting lost in the sign-up flow. It’s a lot easier to just get to the good stuff now that you can use your Facebook login, and we’ve stripped out a lot of junk.
• Slicker Experience: We sanded down a few friction points to make the experience of creating and navigating around the app a whole lot smoother.

As for user demographics, we found the people who said “OMG this is awesome!” the most were people just like us: late-twenties, busy, but have active social lives and lots of friends.

A Company on a Mission

Most successful startups are an overnight success. That night is usually somewhere between day 1000 and day 3500. -Startup L. Jackson

So, no, we haven’t broken out to be the newest, hottest tech startup quite yet and we never expected it to happen quickly. But every day our product gets better, our community grows, and people use Savvy to spend more time together in real life. That’s why we started this company and set out on the “unsolvable” mission to help you see people, not profiles.

At this point, we’re still a three-founder operation running out of a collection of living rooms on a shoestring budget (e.g., the laptop I’m writing this on has a binder clip holding the screen together). To complete the stereotype, one of us is currently couch-surfing so he doesn’t have to pay the notoriously high SF rent and can sustain while we chase the elusive product-market fit.

I don’t keep it a secret, but I think it’s worth putting in writing that if I could pick any two people to start a company with, it’d be these guys: Mo Sakrani & Josh Lehman. Having worked in/with other early stage companies, I know how much relationships get strained going through the startup emotional roller coaster. These gents have skills, creativity, thoughtfulness, and dedication: everything you could ask for in cofounders. Frankly, I’m honored to be on their team.

We also have a couple of awesome interns hailing from UC Berkeley! H/T to Divya Thomas and Miranda Hart.

We’ve put together an amazing group of advisors that sit down with us on a regular basis and help hammer out objectives and spitball ideas. I specifically want to give shout outs to Matt Iovanni, Zack Pardey, David Landgren, Robert Suarez, Joe Caminiti, and Jon Dishotsky for the time and detail they’ve put into working with us.

We’re really looking forward to bringing on a few fresh new faces on all fronts of the business in 2016. If you feel our mission and want to get involved, drop us a line!

What’s Next for Savvy

That’s up to you! We still have a few check-boxes to tick off and assumptions to test before we’re ready to call our public beta period a wrap, and we critically evaluate every single piece of feedback and our hearts burst when people recommend us. Send us some feedback, or share the love if you’re feeling it!

We’ve got some awesome stuff in the works for Savvy. Based on what we’ve heard so far — and without getting too specific — here are the areas we plan to tackle next quarter:

• Ubiquity — People want more ways to share and experience Savvy with others. Who are we to get in the way?
• Social Intel — When people use Savvy over group text or email chains, they frequently comment on how easy it is communicate without touching the keyboard. We’ve got a lot more of that coming.
• Group Organization— Our strongest users have asked for a few specific upgrades for their groups, and we’ll be thanking them for staying Savvy by rolling out the red carpet.

We’re excited to see what the new year brings and will check-in again soon!

Thanks for reading!

It’d be really cool of you to recommend this article by tapping the little heart below. You can also follow us on Twitter and Instagram: @savvy_ai

Savvy: What It’s Been Like to Launch Our First App was originally published in Stay Savvy on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Feature: Quick Start

1. Access the quick-start menu by holding down the Start a Gathering button in the bottom-center of your screen.

1. Pick a friend (or a few!) and hit invite now.

Your friends will receive a message stating that you want to hang out with them soon. They can reply yes, interested or unavailable.

Anyone that replies yes or interested can help you hammer out the specifics (time, location, etc.) and add other friends to the get-together.

Those that are unavailable are happily left out of the conversation :)

Start a Get-Together In a Few Seconds was originally published in Stay Savvy on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Feature: Trending Events/Activities

With trending events and activities, Savvy filters through the noise and displays select events around you that are popular. It also displays common activities that people get together for.

All the important details are included and you simply need to choose people to get things going!

1. Access trending events/activities from the filters menu in the top right.
2. Tap an event or activity you’re interested in, choose friends and boom! You’re off to figuring out plans.

Savvy will get smarter over time to ensure that these trending events and activities are relevant to you!

Rally Friends For an Event or Activity Trending Around You was originally published in Stay Savvy on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

So, what are your options:

1. Start a group text? That’s easy to send off, but you know you’ll regret it. Sure, you know everyone, but it’s going to be chatting with a lot of random numbers for everyone else. If people can’t make it — too bad — they’re stuck on the chain anyway. And as soon as someone starts cracking jokes, all the important info gets buried.
2. Post a status? Do people actually do that? Assuming the right group will assemble itself is a big assumption. (God, please don’t let Becky respond to the post! She’s so awkward.)
3. Create a formal invitation or event? Ain’t nobody got time for that. Plus, no one has weighed in on what they want to do yet. Unless it’s a big event, people like to have a say in the matter first.
4. Convince your friends to download some new app? How does that make your life any easier? Yeah, it doesn’t.

Wouldn’t it be awesome if there was a way to take the work out of getting together? Something simpler than texting and way more efficient?

Introducing…

Savvy:

Clever Coordination

How Savvy Works

You can learn along at home by downloading Savvy from the App Store.

1. Start Something

Figuring out plans with friends always starts the same way: “What are you doing tonight?”

That’s why all Savvy needs is who you want to see and a general time frame. (“Soon” is enough.)

If you want to jazz it up with more details — like a title, where to meet up or when the party’s over — you can add those in too, but it’s not necessary.

Once the convo is started, you can add more details as the party evolves and Savvy will keep everyone posted.

2. Savvy Gets it Together

Friends don’t need to be on Savvy to join the fun. Our intelligent assistant reaches out to your friends and lets you know if they’re available.

Friends not on the app can still chat, RSVP and get important info by communicating with Savvy over text messages, saving you the back and forth.

Savvy also connects to Google Maps and Uber so everyone can find their way to the spot.

3. Stay in the Know

Only see stuff you care about. You only see gatherings you’ve been invited to or you’ve created.

No feeds and no randos. Only people invited to gatherings with you know you might be going, and invitations can only come from people that have your contact info.

Need to know if folks are in or out by a certain time? Create expiring invitations. If they snooze, they lose!

Smart notifications give you important information when you need it, and don’t blow up your phone when you don’t.

Want to take a deeper dive? Check out our FAQs and Community Guidelines.

If you have questions or suggestions, let us know at: team@savvy.ai

Introducing: Savvy was originally published in Stay Savvy on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

I’m extroverted. I love being around people and relationships are important to me. But as a millennial sunsetting on his 20's, it’s getting harder and harder to get people together. Rallying my friends means starting a text message chain, emailing people, and possibly starting a Facebook event if the event size calls for it. Then everyone consults calendars and/or checks with significant others. Some are good about responding to invitations whether or not they can make it. Others say they’ll be there and then don’t show up. (I know… I know. I’ve done it too.)

The amount of steps it takes us to get from here to dinner with friends is growing increasingly aggravating. This whole communication cycle is bogged down with frustrating pieces. Is it just because we’re getting too busy? Is technology getting in the way somehow? Is there something else going on here? Aziz Ansari nails it on the head in his recent standup routine. After watching it, ask yourself: Do I know people like that? Have I been that person before? And, most importantly, can we be better than this?

Never content to just let things be, a couple good friends and I set out to determine:

(1) what are the frustrations people have with the way we interact, and (2) can anything be done to significantly improve the problems we’re facing?

We interviewed and surveyed over 100 millennials. Here’s what we found.

Who Participated

The interviews and surveys took place between November 14, 2014 and April 2, 2015. We had a total of 102 participants. (Thanks again to everyone who participated!) Here’s how the basic stats broke down:

• Gender: Split almost evenly; 51% female to 49% male.
• Age: Pew Research Center defines “millennials” as anyone born between 1981 and 2000. Median age range for participants in our study was 26–29 (59% of participants). The other two most represented age ranges were 30–33 (24%) and 22–25 (14%). Individuals falling outside the generational categorization were excluded, though the deductions below may be generalizable.
• Residence: 59% of participants lived in urban environments. San Francisco, Sacramento, and Los Angeles areas had the best representation with 37%, 17%, and 13% respectively. About 37% of participants lived in suburban environments scattered around the U.S. Participants lived in as distant places as Oslo, Norway.

It’s worth noting that participants spanned only a degree or two outside our own social networks, which is diverse in some respects and homogeneous in others. We kept it as well balanced as we reasonably could. Take the information below with that in mind.

How We Socialize

The goal of this exercise is to make it easier for millennials to get together in real life with the people they care about. To that end, we needed to figure out how each person organizes his/her social life and to identify common frustration points to improve upon. So, we sat down and asked our participants. Both the interview and survey questions had open narrative answers so we could capture their frustrations accurately. We quickly identified two factors that differentiated how we like to socialize.

Factor 1: Quick Get-Togethers v. Planned Events

We looked at the size of each participant’s real life social groups, how frequently they get together, what they do, where they go, and how they communicate with their groups when trying to arrange plans. The answer was consistently: “It depends!” “Ok, depends on what?” “What type of events are we talking about?”

Participants broke their social gatherings into two categories, which we later defined as:

1. Quick Get-Togethers: The internal trigger for these events is usually boredom or a longing to see a specific person or group of people. To alleviate this feeling, they typically send a quick request, usually via text messaging or similar service, to see if they can find a time in the next few hours or days to meet up. Invitations for Quick Get-Togethers usually don’t extend beyond 9 days in advance and are time sensitive. Groups for these events are usually 8 or less people and tend to be a core group that meet with some regularity. They don’t seem to be purposefully limited in who can join these events. Rather, that’s just how large groups tend to get on short notice.
2. Planned Events: The trigger here is usually something external: a friend’s birthday, visitors from out of town, holiday, or something that’s given cause to celebrate. These Planned Events tend to be much larger in scope and detail and usually fall on weekends to maximize likelihood of common availability. Planning usually starts at least a week in advance. Since there tends to be more details for recipients to track and refer back to, emails and Facebook Events are more likely to be used to spread the word than a messaging service.

It’s worth noting that there is a third situation that takes a hybrid approach, but only a few participants reported it. We’ll call it the business development use case. It’s where business bleeds into your social life. It’s the case where people use email to coordinate semi-business related meetings within a short time frame, or, alternatively, text each other for meetings a week or more in advance. Since the enterprising use case isn’t the core problem we’re trying to solve at this point, we’ll table that discussion. I would suggest reading Bo Ren’s recent Medium article to learn more about the personal implications of merging your social and business lives.

Takeway: The norms and expectations around getting people together for social events generally fall into two categories: Quick Get-Togethers or Planned Events.

Factor 2: Age Makes a Difference

Younger millennials (18–25 year olds) are indeed more socially connected and active than their older peers. They join more social organizations, develop new social networks more readily, and are more fluid with how they spend their social time. It seems since they have less responsibilities, younger millennials are much more easily “bored” and able to arrange Quick Get-Togethers within a short time frame.

As people get older (26+), the size of social groups shrink and social meetups become less frequent. Most participants noted their social calendars tend to be squeezed out by other commitments. Full-time employment leaves little time to socialize during the week, and remaining time on the weekends is usually booked a week or so in advance, especially as people begin to pair off and merge social calendars. People in the 26+ range more frequently participate in a Planned Event and less often in a Quick Get-Together.

Takeaway: The younger you are, the more social and spontaneous you’re likely to be. When you hit 26, you’ll have to start scheduling fun.

The Problem: Poor Communication

Despite differences in type of event (Quick Get-Togethers and Planned Events) and phase of life the participants were in, there was one salient problem:

“Getting everyone together is like herding cats.”

One participant summarized it as a problem of:

“When people don’t respond, when people say they are coming but you know they probably won’t or when the group is super indecisive about what to do, where to go, and what to eat.”

I think most of us can relate to that. If you value the people you’re rallying enough to want to see them, chances are you don’t think they’re acting maliciously when they flake. Most participants chalked it up to a lack of consideration or willingness to put forth effort. Unpacking the quote above, there are 3 problems driving this central frustration. Let’s figure out if we can solve them.

Problem #1: People Don’t Respond

Our rationale for not responding is probably worth a study on its own. It seems to be a combination of procrastination (“I’ll check the calendar in a minute.”) and ADHD-fueled forgetfulness (“Oh, look at what Product Hunt tweeted!”). But as an organizer, it can be intensely personal and insulting to invite someone to hangout and receive nothing in return.

Unfortunately, we haven’t figured out how to make you more popular with your friends or improve their memories. But, by minimizing the amount of effort it takes to respond and tying in a few social psychology principles (read Nir Eyal’s Hooked if you want to learn more), we can help motivate people to be more responsive and timely. I think we can check Problem #1 off as improvable.

Problem #2: People Lie and Exaggerate

One article I’ve come across blames this on a “cycle of flaking”, where we implicitly give each other permission to flake by doing it ourselves.

“For every ‘Sorry, can’t make it!’ text we receive, we likely send two of our own. Giving ourselves permission to stay home with Netflix or take up a more appealing plan can be the most luxurious, freeing moment of our day.”

Aziz Ansari thinks it’s because we’re “the least lonely generation, the least isolated generation.” We have so many options in front of us and know so much about each others’ goings-on, it’s hard to decide which relationships need to be tended to by meeting in person.

There’s not much we can do by way of moral conditioning to make people more honest, but we can provide more accurate information to those who need it and make it simpler for people who are more lazy than dishonest. So, there’s a chance we could make an impact on Problem #2 as well.

Problem #3: Coordination Means Effort

People who are interested in getting together have to hammer out details. Figuring out common availability, central locations, and shared preferences then becomes a matter of long-back-and-forth text/email chains. Spreadsheets get passed around, and then buried under follow-up emails. Some of our more passive participants shared that “it’s easier to say ‘I don’t care’ than be tasked with searching Yelp for a place everyone will like.” Sadly, many millennials we spoke to also think When2Meet and Doodle are still cutting-edge solutions.

If this group indecision stems from laziness and good consumer technology is supposed to make life more convenient, then better suited technology is the answer! Looks like Problem #3 is checked off too.

Ok, so step 1 is admitting we have a problem (or several). I think we’ve done that. Let’s simplify it as:

Takeaway: Communication around social events is unreliable because many of us are forgetful procrastinators with too many options, and technology is poorly suited for how we socialize.

But there’s hope…

The Fix: Getting Savvy

After deconstructing how our generation interacts and where we stand to improve, my partners and I started taking these problems to task full time. We’re designing something to reduce the effort needed to coordinate both Quick Get-Togethers and Planned Events and make the whole experience more engaging. It’s simple and sophisticated. It’s a platform called Savvy.

If you’d like an invitation to join the test community for our impending iPhone release, you can sign up here.

Until then, stay Savvy!

We’d love to hear your thoughts on what we gathered. What problems do you face when getting people together? How do you think we can best fix these everyday annoyances? Email us at: team@staysavvy.co

How Millennials Socialize and Why We’re Terrible at It was originally published in Stay Savvy on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.