How do you make friends as an adult?
As the Co-Founder, I built a 3,000-member community focused on friendship, generating over $10k in revenue.
Role
Co-Founder
Responsibilities
UI/UX Design, Web Developer, Sales, Business Relations
Timeline
January 2024 - August 2024
Women’s Wave helps bridge women over new experiences by bringing strangers together for local friendship events. Events have two components:
the friendship mixer
an interactive activity
Before the event, attendees filled out a psychometric questionnaire. When they arrived, they were sent an email — inside was the name of a potential friend, and conversation starters tailored to the two of them! After a few rounds of this, they jumped into a fun activity, like pickleball, a dinner party, hiking, painting pottery, and so many others.
As I built this company, I spoke to over 40 customers at our events and became very familiar with the pain points that our solution was targeting.
Overview
Our first event had 14 attendees.
The second event?
60 attendees.
Our community just kept growing…
Class project turned startup
My best friend, Cassandra, and I were enrolled in our entrepreneurship capstone class as seniors in Spring 2024. We were entrepreneurship minors at Rice University, where we had been learning about the ins and outs of starting a company from scratch. But, what’s the use of learning all of that if you don’t apply it?
We sat down and brainstormed the idea of Women’s Wave, inspired by Cassandra’s monthly friend get-togethers and my experience as Product Manager at Marriage Pact. Starting from the drawing board, we made a website for our first event: Stretching in the Park. After 3 weeks of laborious advertising on social media and reaching out to local women’s groups, we got 14 attendees to our first event!
How did we scale from having 1 event per month to 4 events in a weekend? We listened to the customers. They had feedback at every event, so we chanelled that into rapid iteration to deliver the best experience from the moment you see one of our ads to after you leave the event.
Friendship in Adulthood: Challenges
The Loneliness Epidemic
In 2023, the U.S. Department of Public Health Services released an urgent public advisory about the Epidemic of Lonliness and Isolation.
Loneliness is more than a bad feeling — it’s a predictor of physical health and lifespan.
The World Health Organization has found only 39% of adults feel connected to others
“How may we provide exposure to potential friendships?”
The Solution: In-Person Social Events With a Twist
Like friend speed dating — but so much better
Before the event, attendees filled out a psychometric questionnaire. We learned about their extraversion, love languages, relationship status, motherhood, and so many other characteristics.
When they arrived, they were sent an email — inside was the name of a potential friend, and conversation starters tailored to the two of them! They had a chance to talk for 20 minutes, and the exposure to a potential friend had been made. After a few rounds of meeting new friends, they jumped into a fun activity, like pickleball, a dinner party, hiking, painting pottery, and so many others!
As I built this company, I spoke to over 40 customers at our events and became very familiar with the pain points that our solution was targeting. This allowed Women’s Wave to iterate fast because every weekend was an opportunity for several conversations with our real customers.
