“Silicon Valley doesn’t understand the concept of fun.”
– Andrew Thompson, Fast Company, October 2023
It’s over. Facebook is in decline, Twitter in chaos. … It’s never felt more plausible that the age of social media might end and soon.
In this environment, it would be easy to dismiss Sidekick as just another social media app. However, Sidekick isn’t social media. It isn’t even social networking. Instead, we’re building something entirely new.
Sidekick is a social catalyst.
Our mobile app leverages users’ interests to help catalyze real, in-person friendships. That’s because we believe that the best way to make a new friend is to share an experience. Any experience.
In fact, the experience itself isn’t important. What matters is that we share it.
There is an enormous unmet need in American society and around the globe. Despite the greatest online connectivity the world has ever known, people are lonelier and more disconnected than ever.
No less than the Surgeon General, the American Pediatrics Association, and Congress have declared us to be suffering from an epidemic of loneliness – a disease experts say is as deadly as smoking. And with over 60% of young adults reporting feelings of “serious loneliness,” whoever can resolve this problem will be richly rewarded.
People want to make real-life friends, but don’t know how or where to start. They know that online connections alone are not sufficient, and Gen Z in particular is terrified of social risk. They’re frustrated with the anonymity of a MeetUp, wary of hacking dating sites like Tinder or Bumble for platonic friendships, and fed up with the vitriol on Facebook and NextDoor. They’re looking for something better. Something new.
Sidekick wants to revolutionize the way people make friends. Our mobile app enables users to meet online, where it’s safe, and then meet offline, where it’s real.
Sidekick is designed to be:
Non-competitive (with no likes, comments, rankings, or follower counts)
Sidekick benefits users, advertisers, and the organizations we partner with
Users
will love Sidekick for being a kind of dashboard for fun. A unified platform where they can find all of the nearby people, clubs and events that share their interests.
Advertisers
will love Sidekick because we won’t have to guess what goods and services our users want. They’ll tell us what interests them.
Plus, we won’t run afoul of Apple’s data privacy rules.
Universities
churches, clubs, and other sponsoring organizations will love Sidekick because we’ll provide them a window into their community.
The challenges facing social media aren’t engineering problems, and they can’t be solved with AI. In fact, social networking doesn’t involve any particularly interesting or important technology challenges.
Instead, as editor Nilay Patel recently noted in The Verge, the problems plaguing social media are political and cultural problems. They can’t be solved by merely doubling down on the existing paradigm.
NOT SIDEKICK
Our ambition is to completely reimagine the online world.
As a seed stage company, Sidekick continues to seek strategic partners who understand the importance of our mission and share our desire for a new approach to online social connection.
Please let us know if you would like to learn more about our unique approach to marketing and sales, our multi-pronged monetization strategy, or how we plan to leverage investor funds to achieve our vision.