SaveMeASeat.io
Company networking reimagined
Okay, so things have evolved quite a bit! We're making a platform play. We have this grouping algorithm that takes large groups and breaks them into small groups and sends out invites. Well, instead of just targeting companies and corporations who need help creating a networking program in the remote world we're moving toward, we've now created a platform where ANYONE can create a group and have small networking groups get created within. Oh, and we've made it so those groups can charge a membership fee if they want, so they can earn revenue and maybe make a few bucks off of our site! I've got a tingle, I think this is going to be a fun ride.
We just launched an affiliate marketing program for SaveMeASeat (https://www.savemeaseat.io/affiliates/new)! Pretty excited about it. Basically, we're handing out affiliate links to our 'partners' that sign up. The 'partners' then use that link to get groups to sign up for SaveMeASeat. The 'partners' can earn up to $1099.00 per sign up!
Today I launched a newsletter on substack that's going to chronicle my journey about building SaveMeASeat. It's my attempt at building in public! I have a bunch of journal entries on standby. I've been journaling privately for myself. Everything from how my Duke MBA Econ professor teaches about pricing and the things I used from that course to hilarious stories that you can only find in startups.
OK, so a lot has happened. I actually abandoned this idea back in April after I built a pretty basic matching algorithm and tried to cold email a half dozen companies. It was a shell of something that I was going to try to market and then I would spend more time on it if I could get anyone to bite. Well, after not thinking about it for about 5 months, I joined an executive MBA program at Duke. We're a cohort of 200 students who were told that our first two terms were going to be done remotely. WTF, was my first thought. I joined this program to network and to potentially meet other entrepreneurs who wanted to start a business together. Long story short, I decided to approach my program managers with this idea for keeping the networking alive with SaveMeASeat.io, and they loved it. So, I got a beta customer with about 200 users, just like that! They're on a free trial Oct-Dec granted they provide me feedback and tweaks to the platform. I've been improving the platform for both the users and the admins (keeping in mind the admins are my paying customers). I officially incorporated as a Delaware C-corp. I'm also neck deep in an official launch coming soon. I never realized how many coordinated efforts go in to an official launch. It's madness. New pricing models, blogs, SEO, newsletters, new landing pages, email marketing campaigns, and so much more. Anyway, I couldn't be more excited for the future on this one. All other projects have faded in to oblivion, even building a new iteration of Stumbleapod.com on top of OpenAI (hit me up if you wanna run ops on that), and this is getting 150% of my attention.
So, in addition to spinning up a site to start iterating on for SaveMeASeat, I felt like it was important to communicate exactly what SaveMeASeat did for an organization in a quick and fun way. I used Adobe Premiere Rush (which I have a license for from being in Duke's exec. MBA program) to create a 30 second video telling both individuals and organizations about what SaveMeASeat does! I hope it comes off clean and fun. I just need to figure out a way to drive the point home that the organization pays for this service for their employees, and it's not something that the employees pay for - because I don't think that's clear anywhere in my copy yet.
I hate networking in my company. We probably have 500ish people working at my site and 20,000 people in total company wide. At my site we have a "let's connect" site-wide meeting invite sent out for 30 minutes in the cafe around cookie trays. It's terrible and I'm not the type to walk up to people and introduce myself.
About a month ago - a spreadsheet version of SaveMeASeat.io was made at my site and we got about 150-200 people to sign up to meet with 3 other randomly selected colleagues on the list for a lunch date once a month. That was a pretty cool experiment. But now, it's time to automate it, and fancy it up a bit. So, over the next month or so, I'll spend some time spinning up a site that will do just this:
A company can sign up for our service.
We'll then invite their employees to sign up.
Each month, we'll create groups within the organization and send each group an invite to a meeting including a video conference link PLUS a fun video for each group to watch that will prompt them with questions and games.
I will make this thing fully automate-able.
2 Comments
Sounds somewhat interesting. I suggest prioritizing a good moderation automation strategy. There must be a lot of research on group dynamics. Too many forums out there but too little worthy connections including LinkedIn and slack.
Can learn alot from Indie Hackers. Avatars, Popup quotes, contributor points.