There’s a gazillion people on Facebook, and some may use the Facebook events platform to create and invite people to parties and social gatherings, and to find out what events are going on.
But what if you, or your target market, is not on Facebook, and never will be? A whole generation of people (under age 25) are eminent party-goers, but spend their time on Snapchat, Insta and TikTok.
These Gen Zers (or ‘Zoomers’) were born after the Millennials (born 1981-96) and are aged 6 to 24.
This issue came to light earlier this year when UWA student Mihailo Bozic was manning his social events tent (for ‘Sober?’) at orientation day talking to a new student.
‘How do I follow the events?’, asked the freshman. ‘On Facebook’, said Mihailo. ‘Oh, yeah, I’m not on Facebook’ came the reply.
Only 2% of teenagers are on Facebook, and a whole generation is growing up who will never use it. After all, their parents are all over it. They’ll never go there.
To solve this problem, co-founders and uni mates Mihailo Bozic and Jordan Saddik have created a new service Envited, which allows anyone on any platform to create and invite (‘envite’) people to events, linking in and uploading details to their calendars, or social media platforms.
The two took the idea to the recent Perth Startup Weekend, and won the contest. They have since been funding the development of the service themselves, with the aim of launching in time for second semester events in Australia, and then later when northern hemisphere universities start back.
To say the founders have global ambitions is an understatement.
There’s nothing like this on the market, and there’s a huge market to tap into. We are doing a fund raise at the moment, so we’d be excited to hear from anyone who shares our vision.
Mihailo Bozic
Recently, Mihailo asked his ‘Just Jedi Things’ Facebook group (with an incredible 600,000 likes) if they’d be interested in the new service, and over a thousand signed up. OK, validation.
If you’re thinking – fine, but how does this make money? – then the Envited founders have ideas to become a complete events app, from inviting people on any platform to events through to ticketing, including vendors, venues and other suppliers.
“Basically, the idea for Envited is – you want to create an event, and you go to Envited, and can do it all from there,” said Mihailo.
Last month, 136 events were created through the app, with 2,200 users. Their goal now is to build out the features, and launch into the Australian and overseas uni markets in the second half of 2021.
Our vision is to connect friends across all social media platforms. We want you to be able to invite your friends, and they invite you, to events, regardless of which platform you use. We want to make sure you never miss an event again.
We want to close a $100,000 raise, which will allow us to complete the product and get it to these markets in time.
Mihailo Bozic
Thanks to the Startup Weekend win, the team have use of the Riff co-working space until September. They are in a race against time to raise money, hit their targets and roll this out to 17,000 students at UWA, and beyond.
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[Anyone interested in knowing more can link in with Mihailo here, or email him here.]
