This app raised $ 14M to take loneliness on loneliness epidemic

One Friday evening, Alyx van der Vorm could not stop thinking, “I should do something with someone.”

But he found himself alone once again on Friday night, just thinking about going to the gym. When he realized that trying to plan with people these days is incredibly difficult.

Van der Verm said, “To find out who is, texting, waiting, research option … It was absurd that it was a tap staying at home and watching a film, but watching a friend was ten steps,” Van der Verm said.

At the age of 25, the van der worm is a very high generation of Z, which is connected to the more demographic, which in any way is self-reported as is isolated and lonely feeling. Van der Ver studied computational neuroscience at Harvard University and later worked in a laboratory where he studied how social relations affect mental and physical health.

“Data is Stark. Isolation can be physically harmful because we are universally agreed.” “This assured me that working on friendship is not ‘soft.” This is a real health problem. ,

So in 2020, van der worm started working ClaxA social platform that helps users find community events to join. Five years later, the app today has 50,000 active users who are buying tickets for events, and more than 200,000 users are browsing events. The company has now raised $ 14 million in a series A round under the leadership of Blitzscalling Ventures, including other investors, including Ikram Magdon-ISMIL, Venmo’s co-founder and F1-Driver-Ewest-Investor Nico Rosberg.

Cliex is quite simple in itself: it draws event data from sites such as ticketmaster and tickets and shows its users in their cities, for which they can sign up. It also provides suggestions for places to try, and users can upload their contacts to the app, to see what events their friends are going.

The company has also created a compatibility engine that advises people to join users. “So instead of walking in a room of strangers, you already go on knowing,” Hey, Thomas is the same things that I am; we should connect, “said Van der Verm.

The app also naked people to connect and re -connect people, which the van der Verm says “strange burden of getting cold”, or suggests what some people can see as a tedious task of nutrition of a new friendship. Clyx also has a feature, called programs, is essentially a series of events that lead people to walk with people with the same group in workshop sessions.

“This recurrence is the place where familiar realizes into real friends, and it is one of the most exciting things we have rolled out,” said Van der Verm.

“People are friends,” she continued. “What is lacking, which are nearby, are free at the same time, and for the same things. We remove the plan tax and the right steps are mounted, so ‘we do not have speed after hanging soon.”

Van Der Verm told Techcrunch that she met his leading investors through personal connections, including a stranger meeting in a coffee shop, which added her to an investor friend.

After talking at the Harvard Club, she met Magdon-Ismel and thought that both should meet. To listen to the van der worm, it seems to be a case of “right place, right time”.

“Simon Sinak was another,” he said. “Somebody heard me speaking about friendship, said that I felt like him, and introduced me.”

Clyx is currently working only in Miami and London, and the Van Der Worm is aimed at launching the app in New York in Sao Paulo this month and this year. The company is also investing heavily in product development, brand and cultural participation, and of course, expanding its team.

Clyx is not the first app that tries to help people go out and meet the new world. Posh, meat, dice and even Eventbrite have done so for years; Bumble has an option to search for friends, and even Kaj is trying to go out more. But the van der Verm hopes that the clixes may stand out.

“My dream is to create a world where it is easy to go out and spend time with your friends as to sit at home and scroll,” he said. “And if it helps people feel happy, healthy, and as they are really somewhere – that’s the effect I want to have a clix.”