EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Sidekick is a social media app, for tackling the global issue of loneliness. We provide an easy-to-use platform to quickly find company for any activity desired. This could be activities like biking or just hanging out in the park, but also activities offered by our business partners. We as a platform ensure smooth connectivity, as well as algorithm-based suggestions for users about ongoing activities.

Problem and solution

We live in a time where social media has become a substitute for real connection. Especially Millennials often suffer from loneliness and depression. We found that 1 out of 3 people are lonely and that many do not have anyone do share their hobbies and free time activities with.

Therefore, we created SideKick. It enables users to match with the perfect buddy for an activity, easily and within seconds. The perfect buddy will be generated by comparing the interests, as well as using historic data of previous meetups. At the same time, it will recommend our users the most suitable location like a tennis club, a laser tag provider, or a cocktail bar and they will be able to book a ticket directly through the app.

With Sidekick you set up a spontaneous adventure with like-minded people with just one click. It’s a one-stop service that matches you with users and activities and the best location automatically.

Method and testing results

To understand who our real customer is, we conducted surveys with over 400 participants, literature research and over 50 personal interviews. We have concluded that our target group is young professionals, i.e. professionals between 21-35 years of age. On this basis, we created our prototype, which works in the form of a click-dummy. It has been tested over 2 rounds and is still in the initial phase, but already contains some working tools, like the possibility to create an activity and the chat function, which has also been tested.

Market and strategy

By analyzing the competitive environment, we have located Meetup, Trember and Spontacts as our nearest competitors. However, after extensive analysis of our direct competition we decided, by using the blue ocean strategy to create new uncontested market space. As almost all services do not provide users with spontaneous and uncomplicated meetups, we will raise these attributes well above the industry's standard. Additionally, since our target is to offer a convenient and easy to use application, we will be incorporating a one-click-solution (matching with users and activities). This fuss-free and time saving solution will, therefore, enable us to stand out in this competition.

Business plan and financials

Regarding our business model, we made at least 5 iterations where we tested our inputs on the different segments of the BMC. First, we focused on the value proposition and found out that a major part of our potential customers would like to use our app also as tool to appoint meetings with friends more easily. Furthermore, we defined our customers more specifically and realized that young professionals have the biggest need for our app. The last iterations consisted of overhauling our revenue streams and the cost structure. While doing research for our financial plan, we ascertained that the major part of the costs will consist of the app development, its maintenance costs and the marketing. We will have a lot of different revenue streams, mainly ad revenues, in-app purchases and commission revenues from B2B customers for procuring activities to our users.

Contact Person

• Seleem Sherif
  sherif.seleem@s.wu.ac.at

Student team

• Aradini Florent

• Schreiner Herrmann

• Seleem Sherif

• Skombar Nicole

• Trieb Matthias

Project-Manager

• Alexander Staub, M.Sc.

• Thomas Pannermayr, MSc (WU)