Five years ago, when Miles “Deuce” McBride moved to New York as a 20-year-old rookie playing for the Knicks, he found the transition to a big city overwhelming and struggled to find the right crowd.
“When I came here, everyone on my team was married and had kids or they were single,” he told TechCrunch, reflecting on his initial feelings of loneliness as the youngest player on the team. “I wish there was a way to meet people with similar interests organically. I feel like with social media, everyone is too superficial.”
Recognizing a common pain point for many people in their twenties, McBride teamed up with veteran startup founder Joe Einhorn to create mmotionAn app that combines elements of location tracking with social search features to help people find new friends based on shared interests, as well as recommend nearby bars, restaurants, and other social hotspots.
Now available in beta to users in NYC, the app differs from traditional friendship platforms like Bumble BFF, instead competing more directly with apps like Snap Map and Find My. Instagram has also recently entered this field with a new maps feature. (The beta of mMotion will be limited to 1,000 members.)
mMotion leverages geofencing and state tracking to monitor users’ movements, highlighting people with similar interests in the surrounding area. It also keeps track of where users go to recommend similar, meaningful places to explore. Plus, users get a private log of all their location history, which works like a personal timeline so they can easily see all the places they’ve searched.
To access Mmotion, users must apply for a subscription. Once accepted, they can enter their interests, join “circles” or groups they are interested in (such as those focused on hiking, attending basketball games, or visiting art galleries), and send friend requests to others nearby. The app also offers private messaging between users.
To prioritize user security, the app features encrypted location data that is only accessible to the user unless they choose to share it. Users are incognito by default, in what MMotion refers to as “Vault Mode” and can be switched at any time.
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Additionally, if users want only certain people on the app to know their location, mMotion offers a feature called “Personas”. The feature allows users to create three separate groups, enabling them to share more private locations, such as their home address, with a select group of people while maintaining a more public persona.
“So Miles can have (his “Deuce” persona), which is something where it’s a little more curated, because he’s a public figure. So it’s for all the Knicks fans to see Miles go to places where he doesn’t mind getting to know mainstream people. And then he can have a (persona) when he goes to a different city, and he really wants to be low-key,” Einhorn explained.
Standard security and moderation tools such as blocking and reporting have also been implemented.
The app will work on a monthly subscription model for users. Although exact pricing details were not disclosed, Einhorn indicated that it would be affordable, saying, “It’s not going to be more than a cup of coffee per month. It’s not going to be anything crazy.”
Premium options offering additional features may also be available. For example, the Basic tier allows users to join only five circles per city at a time.
Another aspect of the app is its offerings to local businesses. By displaying restaurants, bars, coffee shops, fitness studios and more on a map, mMotion aims to promote small businesses while also providing them with information about their customer base. The app collects data from a variety of sources, including Google, OpenStreetMap and Apple Maps.
mMotion’s long-term vision is to encourage businesses to sign up for a subscription service that provides access to anonymized analytics. This service will help businesses target the right customers effectively.
Apart from subscription fees, the app will generate revenue through advertisements.
The launch marks McBride’s first time as a startup founder, putting him in line with other athletes who have made the transition to entrepreneurship. Meanwhile, Einhorn is best known as the founder and CEO of Fancy, a social e-commerce platform that competes with Pinterest. He also launched a luxury goods startup last year called Long Story Short.
MMotion is planning a wider launch in the near future once it receives enough feedback from testers. It is currently available to download iOS And Android devices.
