Teammate 1
Name: Andrew Curnow (LinkedIn, Twitter, Github, Personal website)
Age:40
Location: Australia
Gender: Male
What's your background? Lifelong learner. Curious. Love to build and create.
When I see something that I want to exist in the world I'm driven to try and make it happen, especially if I can have a positive impact on peoples lives. I've built bricks & mortar businesses from the ground up, launched a start-up and written screenplays.
Proud husband and father of two girls. Closeted introvert. Interested in breaking down the barriers to human connection.
What other projects have you built to date? AutoZone.com.au - web 1.0 local auto directory Simplified Security - home improvement business grown to 15 staff & $1M ARR Freeplay.com.au - the next evolution of Groupon BMAD developers group: http://bit.ly/3sv1NyR Brisbane's annual Mobile App Hackathon: http://bit.ly/3bBaEbt
Describe your professional status Head of Sales @ OneSolomon's responsible for 50+ staff & annual budget over $10M
Describe something weird or unusual that you’ve built or done early on in life. In high school, I was basketball obsessed so in senior school, as sports captain I introduced a multi-sports carnival - that still runs every year two decades later. I also love writing screenplays and have the next Star Wars sitting on my hard drive..."if only I ever finish it"!
Who is someone you personally know that will have an incredible impact on the world one day? Jess Koncz, Founder and CEO of EatSee.menu. An inspiration in what she's built and how she carries herself with genuine care for others.
Describe a time when you intentionally broke the rules. Building a tech product as a non-tech founder has required a lot of non-conventional action. One example is joining a developers-only Meetup group to get access to potential technical co-founders, the commandeering the admin when the organizer stepped down - it worked!
What books, movies, or music do you like? TV - Twin Peaks, Lost, Dark, True Detective, NBA basketball
Movies - Mysteries, thrillers, sci-fi, and most things with Adam Sandler, Will Farrell, Ben Foster
Music - Trailer music, classic rock, pop mash-ups
Books - Cosmology, theoretical physics, philosophy, business & start-ups
What are websites (communities, blogs, etc.) you find interesting? Web: Twitter (I'll admit it!), TWiST Slack. Podcasts: All-In, The Mismatch, Unsolved, TWiST, The Portal, Joe Rogan, Making Sense, Tim Ferris, The Ringer, Masters of Scale, Mindscape. Audiobooks via Audible.
Teammate 3
Name: Fernando Mata (LinkedIn, Twitter, Github, Personal website)
Age: 29
Location: New York, United States
Gender: Male
What's your background? I’m a Swift and iOS developer with 5+ years of experience and 2 years of experience as a Product Manager. I graduated from one of the best Mexican Universities currently ranking third in Latin America and in the top 50 in North America. I have published six apps to the AppStore and built two enterprise apps for Ford APAC. Originally from Chihuahua, in Northern Mexico, I have international experience in Spain, China, and currently New York City
What other projects have you built to date? https://github.com/ChiliLabs/CHIPageControlhttps://github.com/Jakenberg/ObjectMapper-RealmQuora’s top writer 2018 https://www.quora.com/profile/Luis-Fernando-Mata-LicónPublished by Forbes Mexico: https://www.forbes.com.mx/las-mentiras-que-se-dicen-a-si-mismos-los-fundadores/
Describe your professional status Ribbon Home Inc., NYC Co. transforming how people buy and sell their homes
Describe something weird or unusual that you’ve built or done early on in life. I did my internship at my university’s R&D department, where I had the chance to be one of the first students to work with Swift as a programming language. Together with the electronics team, we built vending machines that you could control through an app on your phone.
Who is someone you personally know that will have an incredible impact on the world one day? One of the biggest YouTubers and communicators in Mexico named Chumel Torres. I met him when we performed a play together.
Describe a time when you intentionally broke the rules. I usually look into ways to follow the rules and achieving what I want and I’m not a big fan of intentionally breaking the rules to take any advantage, so sorry for not having an answer for this one.
What books, movies, or music do you like? Books. Non-fiction. Psychology, Biology, Astronomy, Physics, and Business. Fiction. Sci-Fi, Fantasy and Historical Fiction
Videogames Strategy and adventure games.
Movies Anything that will keep me entertained
Music Rock, alternative, EDM, house, bluegrass, and acoustic
What are websites (communities, blogs, etc.) you find interesting? I love Quora, Twitter, Reddit, and Medium, each one of those sites has its special flavor and these are the places where I can spend hours and hours without feeling it
Teammate 4
Name: Rachelli Yaafe (LinkedIn, Personal website)
Age: 34
Location: Australia
Gender: Female
What's your background? I come from as far away from a tech background as probably possible. My life has taken many twists and turns and has seen me switch careers and continents on multiple occasions. I have been a dancer, worked in retail & admin, and now an entrepreneur.
What other projects have you built to date? The Naked Doula - creating "the village" for all birthing people and their families.
Be. Her. Friend. - FB group for women seeking friends (20k+ members): http://bit.ly/3qTWOHB & http://bit.ly/3utuga3
My Kinde - disrupting the fast fashion industry: http://www.mykinde.com.au/
Describe your professional status Founder@ Miit, The Naked Doula, Be.Her.Friend & MyKinde, dancer, doula, student.
Describe something weird or unusual that you’ve built or done early on in life. I've been a Student Birth Doula 🤱 and Student Holistic Counsellor 💆♀️, done Cuddle therapy👫 and Womb Magic 🧘♀️ with much more to come.
Who is someone you personally know that will have an incredible impact on the world one day? My daughter Mila. I will teach her to have a voice, be heard and seen without fear.
Describe a time when you intentionally broke the rules. I could tell you, but then I'd have to...well you know the rest. To be honest, though I think that someone from my background being a 3 x founder and making a difference in people's lives would be as unexpected to some as anything else I've done.
What books, movies, or music do you like? Anything that puts Mila to sleep.
What are websites (communities, blogs, etc.) you find interesting? Outside of raising my daughter and Miit, Be.Her.Friend and MyKinde I don't have a huge amount of time, but do often find myself in the usual places like Facebook and Instagram.
Teammate 5
Name: Michael Mounteney (LinkedIn, Github)
Age: 56
Location: Australia
Gender: Male
What's your background? I am a programmer by training and profession but have moved into a mix of project management and hands-on development. During a working life of 33 years I've seen more technology become obsolete than I use now and have done it all from low-level embedded systems written in assembly language (Z80 and 8086) through defence systems written in C++to web and n-tier systems written in Python, PHP and Haskell.
What other projects have you built to date? unpublished research and investigation project into source-code translation.https://github.com/mounty1/JackRose, a spaced-repetition learning system implemented as a web server, in Haskell, using the Yesod framework.https://llvm.org/pubs/2009-07-ISSTA-BegBunch.html
Describe your professional status Software Development Manager at Next Generation Voice PTY Ltd.
Describe something weird or unusual that you’ve built or done early on in life. One thing I did as a youth was to walk, unaccompanied, across the country.
The country in question at the time was the UK, so the distance was only 144 km but I made it more fun by doing it in the middle of winter.
Who is someone you personally know that will have an incredible impact on the world one day? My grandson. He has complete self-confidence and remarkable sporting ability. He will be a top-league player of cricket or AFL one day
Describe a time when you intentionally broke the rules. Apparently breaking the rules is a big deal. Who knew? Most rules, including so-called laws, are devised for the guidance of the wise and the obedience of fools.
What books, movies, or music do you like? Movies in particular are subject to such great commercial pressure that it is almost impossible to make one without compromise. I do admire John Boorman's Excalibur, The Iron Ring and the first Matrix movie. Books: The Demon's Sermon on the Martial Arts, The Empty Mirror
What are websites (communities, blogs, etc.) you find interesting? I subscribe to a variety of RSS and Twitter feeds for professional and personal reasons: Mark Dominus, Ars Technica (despite the atrocious English) and Slashdot (of course -- I skim-read it).
What is your project? Miit makes it easier to meet new people in your area by eliminating the awkwardness & friction that stops adults from making new friends.
What's new about this? We've learned from our users that the reason so many similar products fail is that people don't solely connect over shared interests or activities.
People connect over common values and stages of life and making these new connections fun & frictionless produces magic moments.
Why you? Why do you think you could do this? We have:
Project details Our need to connect with others is deeply hardwired and goes right back to when we'd hang out in groups so we could survive.
Times have changed, but not being connected to others can still take a serious toll on our relationships, health, wellbeing, and even our lives.
WHY NOW?
In a recent survey 61% of people aged 18 to 25 report serious loneliness in the prior month.
More than ever, in a post-COVID world people, are looking for new ways to create and foster genuine human connection.
Making friends online now is where online dating was 10 years ago. It is a multi-billion dollar opportunity in need of a solution that isn't just for extroverts.
We believe we have that solution.
Miit is more granular than Facebook Groups with users able to curate their experience by age, sex, location, and interests.
Miit also has a stronger focus on communication, engagement, and discovery than Meetup with a content-based approach that matches you with people the way Facebook matches you with ads.
The secret sauce is AI-generated activities that allow users to opt-in with a simple swipe, eliminating the friction and awkwardness that prevents many adults from making friends.
We will use a freemium model that importantly shares revenue with community builders, organizers, and moderators. This will also drive growth and our go-to-market.
Find out more via our deck: http://bit.ly/30hRCl1
Project website https://miit.co
One day, this project could become...A company
Which competitors do you fear?
Competition in the social space is steep, though for several reasons we see ourselves as a marketplace for connection more than a social network.
Major players:
What do you plan to accomplish over the next 4 weeks?
What numbers will you use to measure success? Pre-monetisation:- MAU- Retention- Event specific metrics (new connections, events created, links shared, RSVP's, Questions asked/answered etc)- New users Post-monetisation add:- Revenue- Free/paid conversion- Communities created
CategoriesConsumer, Other, Mental Health
How did you hear about Pioneer? TWiST pod