Friendsy is a U.S. student-only social network that requires a .edu email and employs a Tinder-style swipe-to-like interface. The app, launched under six months ago after an initial 2013 website, lets users indicate if they want to date, hook up, or be friends and supports anonymous invitations and chat. The company reports nearly 100,000 users across the U.S. and about 750,000 mutual matches to date (up from 450,000 in March). Friendsy has built a network of roughly 100 campus representatives to drive adoption and is prepping for a major back-to-school growth push. Financially, the team completed a $500,000 seed round from Lerer Hippeau Ventures and Slow Ventures, expanding the $200,000+ it had previously raised from the same investors and Princeton University. The team highlights campus-only access as a core differentiator, while noting that limiting the service to students could complicate scaling beyond campuses. Friendsy is a mobile app restricted to users with .edu email addresses that lets college students swipe to friend, date, or hook up. The product combines Tinder-style swiping with options to specify intent (friend/date/hook up), campus-specific filters (school, gender, year, major, group), a hint feature to increase match likelihood, an anonymously posted compliments feed with moderation, and a ChitChat live-chat feature. The founders launched Friendsy as a Princeton website in spring 2013, later moved to a mobile app and expanded to other campuses before a nationwide launch earlier this month. The app reported rapid engagement and growth: the user base doubled to more than 45,000, it recorded about 450,000 mutual matches, roughly 18 million swipes in two weeks, and average user sessions of about 26 minutes (75 minutes per day). It is reported as most popular at Michigan, Northwestern, Dartmouth, Princeton and James Madison University, with growth aided by features like anonymous invitations. As the founders approach graduation, they are exploring alumni-network options to keep users connected after leaving campus.

Total raised

$1M

Funding rounds

2

Latest round

Seed

Latest activity

Aug 2015