Cracking the buddy code
These days, an app that will help shy freshmen to make new friends is being launched. Behind the app are four women who dream of living off what they create.
Have you been at campus the first week of the semester and knocking about in search of the others in the buddy group? For new students, in an unfamiliar city, there are many places to go wrong. Now four girls help you find others in the same situation and prevent you ending up lost somewhere. The app, Youin, is used among this year's buddy groups to make it easier to meet. With a click you will be able to socialize. With a click you share your position, where you will meet and send out a request to do something. In this way, the threshold for meeting new people becomes lower.
Will sort out the buddy chaos
In a basement in Oslo Science Park, four women sit smiling broadly. The brains behind Youin have all been buddies and freshmen, and have experienced that buddy groups can be large and confusing.
Mari Lindeng Larsen says that they wanted to create something that lowers the threshold for being social.
Along with Victoria Våpenstad, Jeanette Johansen and Mona Kleven Lauritzen she has create an application to solve buddy tangles that UiO now uses in their buddy week. The other women smile and nod eagerly.
The aim of the app is to get friends to be able to meet more easily and be more spontaneous in social life.
Victoria Våpenstad, founder and CEO of Youin
– Buddy groups are often large. Those who have been buddies themselves know that it is very much to organize. Getting the 20 freshmen to meet at the same place can be a challenge, she continues.
Eureka
The women hardly envisioned that, one year after they finished their degrees from UiO, that they would work in the country’s largest technology incubator and work with their own app.
– It started with Mari visiting me when I studied at the entrepreneurial school in Singapore, says Våpenstad.
The idea came while they sat and talked about how difficult it was to meet in Singapore. You can be at the same place and still not meet, she says.
Having proposed the idea for one of the professors in Singapore, Våpenstad and Lindeng Larsen were sent off to a three-month stay in an incubator, a place working on developing innovative businesses in Bangkok. That’s where the dream became a plan.
Women and technology
The women are aware that there aren’t many who choose to do like them. Figures from Innovation Norway show that around 70 percent of all entrepreneurs in Norway are men. StartupLab can tell that the proportion of women among them is between 10-15 percent.
– We haven’t paid much attention to the fact that we are women. We know it can be problematic to be a female entrepreneur, but we have not experienced anything either way based on our gender, says Våpenstad. Lindeng Larsen hopes that more women dare to pursue their own ideas.
– It's really fun creating your own workplace, says Lindeng Larsen. Nevertheless, it hasn’t been a straight path for the women.
– There is a lot of work and we have at times worked almost round the clock, says Våpenstad.
Privacy
Privacy has always been a priority for the women.
– Privacy is very important to us. We do not want to track people. The app records your whereabouts on the button when it’s pushed. It remains visible for the others for an hour, then deleted, says Lindeng Larsen. The app is free and they currently make no money on their business. This is why cooperation with the University has been important.
Acting leader of UiO buddy programme, Sören Döpker, is very pleased with this year's technological innovation.
– We had a meeting in the beginning of January. The app clearly responds to a need that arises in buddy groups. Many don’t know the area well, so being able to locate each other in the app is very useful, he says.
