What does the future hold?

After 12 months, it’s time to reflect on where we are, and where we are headed.

It’s been an amazing 12 or so months for Zojul. We’ve created something real, and built a community. That takes a huge amount of work, commitment, and self-belief. I’m exceptionally proud of that, and immensely grateful to everyone who’s helped us achieve it.

We funded development of the platform to date with a helpful grant from Innovate UK. That project came to an end on September 30th 2016, so now is the right time for us to pause and reflect on where we are, and where to go from here.

I believe we have shown that there is clearly a market for a socializing platform which:

• Focuses on helping people forge friendships, by placing who you meet above what you do.
• Creates a dynamic and continuously refining network of social connections, rather than fixed groups.
• Uses smart matching and user feedback for better introductions than simply having shared interests or attracting a particular type of person to the platform.

That said, there’s a long way to go, and a number of tough challenges still remain:

• As a free platform, how can we achieve organic (i.e. zero-cost) growth?
• How can we make the platform more user friendly, and better serve the needs of our members?
• How can we monetize in the longer term, to make Zojul sustainable, and available to a wider audience?

And there’s the rub. Our growth has come from running expensive events ourselves (our quizzes, which we make a loss on); members inviting friends onto the platform has accounted for only a small percentage of users.

Without either clear organic growth (with the expectation of future income) or an income from existing users (with the expectation of future growth), Zojul currently lacks a business case for existing.

Some members have suggested we go for a subscription model, like City Socializer or Thinking Bob; I feel that would compromise our target of becoming a mass-market platform, changing the lives of millions of people. Instead, it would turn us into an events company, which isn’t what we want to be. We’ve always wanted growth and a huge user base.

In order to grow, I believe we need a compelling platform, one that makes meeting up with old friends and new ones a breeze — simple, intuitive, enticing people to go out and meet up, and encouraging good social behaviour. These days it also needs to be a mobile app with a great user interface. We haven’t achieved that yet — not even close — and I feel that it’s only when we do that we’ll see organic growth. So there’s a lot of work to do there.

Doing this would require a small group of people (2 or 3) who collectively have the skills, creativity and, most of all, the desire, to take Zojul to the next level, to commit most, if not all, their time to that task over the next 12 months. And we’d need to raise money to do it.

It’s a huge commitment. Sadly it’s one that I’m not able to make any more. This is a very personal decision. Whilst I can see a demand for what we’d like to build, growing the business would cost a lot of money. I also no longer believe that we’d be able to monetize in the way and to the extent that we’d hoped. I therefore don’t see a great business case for pushing forwards with it right now. There’s also an external factor: I’ve been offered a great position at another firm, and it’s an opportunity that, given our current status, I feel I can’t turn down. For those reasons, I’ve decided to end my involvement in Zojul. I and co-founder Ben have therefore also taken the tough decision to close down the platform.

That’s sad news. Sad because we know how important great friendships are to people’s health and happiness, and we’d love to make it easier for people to make them. Sad too, because we know we’ve already helped some people achieve that, and we feel like we’re letting them, and others, down by not continuing. Unfortunately, what’s great for people doesn’t always make great business sense.

What’s going to happen to the Zojul platform?

The platform currently requires a lot of manual work to keep going, generates a lot of support queries, and creates legal liabilities. Unfortunately that means we can’t simply leave it on the web.

On October 31st 2016 we’re going to take the website down, and delete all user data. Between now and then we will continue to allow our members to host events on the platform, but we won’t allow any events to be posted for dates later than October 30th.

We’re hugely grateful to our members, especially those who’ve come along to multiple events, have gotten what we’re trying to do, and have even hosted events. Your support, encouragement and general good vibes have made this journey worth all the while.

In the future we may well return to the problem, applying the lessons we’ve learnt to create something much better, and Zojul will be reborn. In the meantime, there’ll be a static page at zojul.com.

Whatever happens, remember — the future is what you make of it.