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“ We ’re a long way from knickers , ” Andy Dunn , founder of on-line manner retail merchant Bonobos , told TechCrunch . Now , the former chief operating officer is taking on a altogether different challenge : He wants to serve people make friends .
Dunn ’s newest venture , Pie , is a social app focused on bringing people together in real life .
With an$11.5 million Series A raiseand the funds to bear organizers to host issue , Piehas develop to over 130,000 monthly active user , despite only being available in San Francisco and Chicago . But more user signify that the in - person events hosted through the app were also getting more crowd , making it harder for masses to connect .
The young ship’s company was present with a problem : If 100 of mass show up to an event , how do node recognize who to babble out to ? How can they make friends when they walk into a officious way , ring by strangers ?
“ This is the dish of building a startup , ” Dunn said . “ A solution create a job . ”
Luckily , a potential fix for this trouble was n’t hard to find .
Two consequence organizers on Pie were already working together to build up a tool call Sparked Connections , an AI - powered quiz that tries to omen who people will get along with unspoiled at a given social effect . Pie acqui - hired the two founders , Samir Mahafzah and Sam Stubbs , and folded the quiz into certain assemblage , which are mark as “ Sparked by Pie . ”
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At Pie ’s “ Coffee with Strangers ” outcome , for example , each person who RSVPs will take a unforesightful personality test , where answerer value how much they agree with a given sentiment on a scale of 1 to 5 . These prompts are wide-ranging , and include thing like : Are you uncoerced to sacrifice stability to act on a passion ? Do you conceive in astrology ? Do you beg ? Do you vote ? Do you have any toxic traits ?
Before the event , the quiz ’s algorithm divide responder into radical of six , ground on who the AI cerebrate is most likely to get along . Then , those six people are placed into a group chat on Pie , where they can get to bonk each other before the event .
“ We ’re starting to power it through [ ChatGPT ] . And then when we get feedback loops of who get in touch with who , and who invites people to stuff , we ’ll bug out to see , well , why do hoi polloi hit it off ? ” Dunn said . “ And I mean that ’s such a dark artistry that without the AI inflection point , I retrieve it would be an almost unsolvable problem . ”
With increasingconcernsaround Americans ’ tier of loneliness , it may seem depress that we need algorithms to help us make friends . But if you ’ve ever connected with a new friend via Instagram , or dated someone from Bumble , then you ’ve already let AI into your societal life .
