Entrepreneurial Nicola Gunby’s Social Network app has already collected $ 646,000

Nicola Gunby, a 30-year-old entrepreneur, wanted a community of friends when he moved to London after the pandemia, but was shocked to find himself isolated in one of the largest cities in the world.

Gunby, co -founder of the social networking application and of the CLIQ community, welcomes from Nottingham in the UK and settling in London with its partner Jason Iliffe in 2021 after an attack on Australia.

Gunby and Iliffe were expecting to enter the city’s social scene but soon discovered that meeting with people was a war.

“How can you be in a city with millions of people, but fight to find real links?” Gunby said. “Felt really impossible.”

Gunby tried everything. She followed the network events for female founders, but found them many of the corporate. She even turned into apps like Bumble BFF, which she discovered were “super transactional” while the groups on Facebook were “so obsolete”.

Gunby and IIiffe soon realized that the issue was much larger than they and began to deal with the idea of ​​a social networking platform that united people in real life.

After drafting several plans, they hired an app agency to build an app’s bars and tried it at universities.

CLIQ, which was founded in February 2023, is described as an antidote to stereotype platforms of social media. Users can join communities focused on their interests and hobbies which can range from running, reading, pilates and trust -based groups.

The purpose of the communities is to adjust events so that users can meet in person and ignite friendships.

“It’S’S’S Simply making people’s meeting easy in an authentic way … and teaching people to put their phone, which is very difficult on this day and age when our screen time is so High and we are so dependent on our phones, “Gunby said.

Since its inception, CLIQ has collected £ 528,900 ($ 646,000) in funding and built a 100,000 users worldwide, with SH.BA, Australia and Bali its main markets abroad

The creation of the CLIQ comes as people seek a connection between what is described as an “epidemic of loneliness”.

Gallup’s global loneliness survey, which collected data in 2023, showed that one in five people surveyed around the world felt lonely “many days”. The same demographic of people was more likely to say that they feel angry or physical pain.

2023 report by US surgeon general Vivek Murty “Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation” stressed that loneliness is becoming a growing issue between generations and is a great risk to physical health contributing to things like dementia, stroke in the brain, or even premature death.

“100% 100% a global issue,” Gunby explained. “Pandemia made us much more introverted as people … I think made a lot of people a little scared to accompany them again.

“This is coming out of the works now, and people are wanting in real life, the connection,” she added.

Loneliness is also exacerbated by technology and social media, according to Gunby.

“We feel as connected through our phones that we can see what our friends or influencers are doing constantly, but many of these people we really do not see, so we feel like we are connected to the surface level, But when we look deeper down, we are actually not really no, ”she said.

“The crisis of loneliness is going up and up, and so many people are looking for links, but none of the apps are doing anything to solve this.”

American general surgeon Vivek Murty recently told “The Oprah Podcast” that a solution to loneliness is not to focus more on ourselves, but pay attention to the world outside of us by investing in three things: relationships, services and community .

“When we focus on connecting with something bigger than ourselves, this is actually when we find joy,” he told Oprah Winfrey in an episode of January of her podcast.

Gunby said the reason why CLIQ works is because its communities work around a common interest and purpose. She described a difference between social networking applications and social media applications.

A social networking app has less to consume content and more about connecting with friends, Gunby said, citing the old days of Facebook as an example of this.

“The younger generation, and we talk to many of them … They have never really tried what a real social network is,” she said. “Everyone’s only platform has been social media since then, so Instagram, Tiktok, for example. We are just sitting while consuming. We are moving. We are dependent on our phones.”

“We are not actually associating with anyone, and is removing that face -to -face interaction,” she added.

Clic, she said, is the middle ground among the “beautiful feeling, social media”, and making people’s meeting easier.

“That’s why we wanted to create a hybrid model of: you connect with people online before connecting offline,” she said.

She stressed that social events can often be difficult for more introverted personalities and it can be difficult to create a conversation with a random person when you have nothing in common. With Clic, activity is common interest, she added.

“So you go to a club run as a social, maybe you are really timid and don’t want to open but you can talk about running. You go to a book club. Maybe I don’t want to talk about myself but you talk about the book, “Gunby said.

“If you have that common interest with someone, or you did that activity, or is the concentration of the community about something, you have something to open.”