Social networks are always in flux

We support building them and keeping them healthy

We are a community of women who are here for each other, through good times and bad. We accept each other for who they are and where they come from.  Our community is always open and constantly changing. We pride ourselves on creating a safe space where members can meet new people with similar interest.

We’ve all been through times in our lives where we wish we had some new friends, we moved to a new city or maybe our friends are busy when we aren’t. Women also spend more time shaping and reshaping their social lives. At times it’s easy for us to do, at other times we struggle. In times of need, we shop for new friends, search online for events and then end up chickening out because we don’t want to go alone. How many hours have been lost online looking at profile pictures when all we really want to do is get out and make some new friends?!

Simposi is designed to be the ultimate way to make new friends. Our app is designed to overcome all of the behaviors that prevent us from meeting new people including pre-judgement, being the first to initiate, trying to decide on where to meet, and more. We get straight to the point of meeting new people with a Meet First, Judge Later approach. Those who are confident can lead by creating activities and those that who are shy can wait & choose the right opportunity. Plus, our groups sizes are limited to four so there’s no worries about finding someone to talk to.

How Simposi Works

What does Simposi mean?

Simposi is a shorter version of the word symposium which originally had a very different meaning than the word we know today. In ancient Greece, a banquet would often be followed up with a drinking party which they called a "symposion" and it was more of the drinking than thinking that drew people to the original symposia. The word Symposium comes from a combination of two ancient greek words "pinein" which means "to drink" combined with the prefix "syn", meaning "together."

It is rumored that the definition of what a symposium is gradually changed over the years after Plato complained there was a lack of intellectual conversation and a little too much drinking at the symposia. Symposiums were also mostly reserved for men, so to balance the scales and turn everything a little on its head, our Simposi are focused on bringing women together for fun, activity and intellectual conversation. But ultimately, Simposi is for everyone.

Our Story

Have you ever found yourself stuck at home, wishing you could go to an event but just weren't comfortable going alone? We all have friends and people who are close to us, but their interests and availability doesn't always align with ours, so then how to find that new person who has the same interest in this same activity?

This is exactly the situation we found ourselves in back in 2017, and with excitement we searched the app store looking for the solution to our problem, only to discover the only options are still dating apps! Seriously in the 21st century no one has come up with a better solution? We were floored. So we decided to do a little research on the subject and what we found is that the entire dating app process is a complete failure and inherently flawed right from the get go. Less than 2% of the population uses dating apps and, of that, less than 5% manage to successfully connect and form a relationship with another person through these platforms. So we asked ourselves, what are the problems with these apps and how can we avoid making the same mistakes?

Problem #1: Creating Public Advertisements of Yourself. This is the very first mistake and right away it sets the tone for the whole experience. Browse any friending or dating app and you will find endless users who write, "I don't know what to put here." Many recruit the assistance of friends to help write their profile and the end result is often a filtered or inaccurate representation of who the person really is. It's exactly what happens to a McDonald's hamburger when you get a photographer involved! And who wants to be a hamburger...

Problem #2: Judgement & Rejection. Because everything is based on public ads, we become very judgmental, quickly deciding people are not worthy, or even worse, judging ourselves as not worthy. We create these long checklists of who we want our "perfect match" to be when the reality is none of us is perfect and real connections can only be formed in person. To top it all off, for some reason, social norms go right out the window and people start to engage in all sorts of rude behaviors they would never do in an IRL situation. Let's face it guys, the only real way to meet new people is in person, there just is no substitute for that electric connection we all feel when someone truly gets us.

So then the question became what would work for us? What is a better way to meet new people, which instills social norms, encourages in-real-life meetups and removes all the negative judgmental behaviors associated with dating apps? And then one day, a meeting invite popped up on our phone, a daily occurrence for scheduling work appointments for most of us, which is so easy to do and that's when hit us! What if meeting new people was as easy as accepting a work meeting? What if the meeting invite we just got was an invitation for a ladies brunch on Sunday? How easy would it be to just say yes and go! Even if it didn't work out, its somewhere to start and meeting 3 ladies for brunch instead of one that you struggled to get out from a dating app is much better odds. So this is what we set out to create, a social calendar that fills itself! All you have to do is say yes and show up to meet new people.

But wait, you say, what if I don't like the people I just met? What if I'm only meeting people I don't like? How does this work if you don't know who you are meeting? How can this be safe? Well, we thought of these things too and this is why with Simposi, you are always matched in a group of four, this creates a safe space and makes people behave in accordance with social norms. It also increases your odds of making a real friend because it's just more efficient to meet three people than one person at a time. And then, just to make it extra smart, we layered in machine learning which learns who you like overtime, so that the more you use the app, the better the app gets at matching you with people you like.

But we didn't stop there, we want to make sure Simposi really is a destination for meeting new people and one thing we have learned, is that relying on bored people to come up with exciting activities is a losing strategy and we really want this to be a community space, so we decided lets not make this just about the users, let's invite the community in too! Why not right?, dating app users are already meeting at cafe's and restaurants, why not let those places post the activities too and add some variety of activity to the mix. So with Simposi there is an endless selection of things to do and the focus is always on meeting new people.