Here's an overview of what we've been up to in January & the last weeks of 2022
Hi friends, welcome to Chillsy's 13th monthly update!
Chillsy exists because we are frustrated at the lack of practical opportunities to make meaningful connections, and subsequent missed events and activities.
In these updates, we'll share what we've been up to, and our progress towards our goal of helping people overcome various barriers including time, opportunities, confidence to do things they enjoy and feeling less lonely.
Our Focus in January - The Year Ahead
Over December and January, we spent a lot of time critically reflecting and planning for the year ahead. Considering our resources and abilities, we’ve achieved a lot over the last year. We created a viable marketable product and brand in the Gals Brunch Auckland and Melbourne. We developed and launched a product that people actively use. We’re cashflow positive. We’re just as passionate and committed to Chillsy as we were when we started.
We still have A LOT to work on to make Chillsy a globally scalable social platform that addresses situational isolation through friendship.
A key realisation we had, was that while we’re successful at introducing similar people we have yet to actually create a friendship explicitly through our efforts.
As part of an effort to understand how to do this, we’re doing a few new things:
Summer of Friendship
We’re organising a series of 5 pre-planned hangouts for small groups of women in order to see understand what is required to make strangers good friends
Gals Brunch follow-ups
We’re going to be taking active efforts to encourage our brunch groups to continue meeting, leveraging nudges and accountability to see one-off meetings blossom into beautiful lasting friendships
Jobs to be Done (JTBD) interviews
We’re going to do our very best to understand exactly what our existing user base/customers are hoping to get out of the experience - why are they willing to pay $15 to meet strangers??
While we’ve already been regularly interviewing customers, we want to specifically understand exactly what it is people are trying to achieve by attending a brunch
Based on the performance of the Melbourne Gal’s Brunch with next to no promotion, we see a great opportunity to leverage brunches to support the business. We aim to run more brunches, adding cities and increasing the frequency. This will allow us to fund the business as well as drive product development and run experiments.
Good, Bad and Ugly
Good
A well-deserved break, and time to recharge and spend time with family
Mohammed got engaged while in India! 😲💍
Oversold Melbourne Brunch (39 attendees)
Managed to run Auckland and Melbourne Brunches completely remotely
Started development on our native mobile app
Bad
Feeling drained by the 3am India / 5am Philippines wake-up times
Struggling to have a good communication flow while working remotely
The first Summer of Friendship hangout couldn’t go ahead due to the severe flooding in Auckland. Stay safe everyone!
Ugly
Realising 3 days prior, that most Melbourne CBD brunch spots don’t take reservations. Having a reserved table is critical for attendees as it minimises the friction on their end
Our Focus For Next Month
Executing initiatives to help people make friends - going through the life cycle more intentionally & implementing our learnings ♻️
Executing content strategy (TikTok, SEO…) 🖊
Launching the first version of our new app - first, as a way of supporting brunches! 📱
Kudos
Those that attended the very first Melbourne Gals Brunch
All our Summer of Friendship signups
Vincent Wei for an insightful chat
Asks
“Be kind whenever possible. It is always possible.” - Dalai Lama