Twitter meets YikYak in Clemson MBA student’s startup
Your daily interactions represent an ever-evolving social network based on where you are and what you’re doing – and your social network should do the same, says Clemson MBA student Ryan DeMattia.
Enter Voice, which DeMattia describes as a hyperlocal, geography-based Android and iPhone app that creates micro social networks based on a user’s location, skipping the tedious process of individually adding network connections via a self-generating public local feed. Voice lives in the space between complete anonymity based on location and username-based social networks that span continents, said DeMattia, who started working on the concept in December 2013.
A Massachusetts native, DeMattia has spent the last decade in South Carolina and hit upon the idea while studying political science as an undergraduate at Clemson. More recently, he spent the last four years working for startups in Houston, Tokyo and Adelaide, Australia.
“I had this realization that I was in a room with all of these people, and we definitely had something in common because we’re all in the same room, but we’re not connected via social media,” he said. “It kind of allows people in the same way for them to mingle in person, they can mingle on social media.”
Voice has helped people with compatible goals find each other at networking events as well as been a public forum for local activities and funny observations, DeMattia said. One proposed use includes connecting concertgoers to each other and to traveling performers, who otherwise would have to request to follow each attendee in each new city.
“It interacts with the whole audience,” DeMattia said. Users can specify the distance range of their post from a few yards to a few blocks. “It’s almost as if the feed generates itself to whatever the user is doing,” he said.
So far, the app has around 1,500 active users in 26 countries with concentrations of users in Greenville and New York, he said.
While DeMattia admits many similar applications are out there, he says Voice is a combination of the best pieces of its competitors, particularly by not constantly tracking users’ locations and only letting users see the latest 100 posts in the specified radius.
“We think that while it is a busy space to be in, we’re kind of ahead of the curve,” he said. “There’s a few other local apps like Whisper, but a lot of them focus on the anonymous aspect. What we wanted to do is deliver some of that benefit without all of the problems that anonymity causes.”
Some of those problems include bullying and harassment, he said. The app has the added bonus of only showing a certain number of posts.
“It’s not like Facebook or Twitter where your employer can look back,” he said. “Basically to see the message, you need to be in the right place at the right time.”
The commercialization plan involves hyperlocal ads and direct offers that target users with “powerful, in-the-moment marketing right at the point of desire,” he said. “Why should I see an ad for a product that’s irrelevant to me or across town when I could find something close to me, when I want it?”
DeMattia – who cofounded the company with Dr. Joseph Louro, who serves as CEO – started with a seed round of $280,000 in investment last year that funded the app’s development and preliminary marketing. This year, the duo plans to raise $1.5 million through connections in New York and locally, steering clear of West Coast and D.C. money, he said.
DeMattia said to expect further updates during the spring. “As the team grows and expands, I want to do it right here in town. The other kicker is it’s a lot more affordable to run and grow a company in Greenville than it is in New York or San Francisco. … I don’t see any reason for us to go to the Northeast or the West.”
