What do you do if youre an event discovery startup and suddenly its illegal to attend events? You lean into the cultural shift and pivot.
Today, $11 million-funded calendar app IRL is morphing from In Real Life to In Remote Life.
It will now focus on helping people find, RSVP for, plan, share and chat about virtual events, from live-streamed concerts to esports tournaments to Zoom cocktail parties.Coronavirus could make IRL relevant to a wider audience because before an event only mattered if it was around you.
But now with In Remote Life, content has no geographical limitations, says IRL co-founder and CEO Abe Shafi.
The need is exponentially greater because everyones routines have been shattered.
IRL ranked No.
138 in the United States App Store today, making it the top calendar app, even above Googles (No.
168).Robinhoods Josh Elman joins IRLIRL has some fresh product development talent to lead it through the transition.
The startup has hired stock trading app Robinhoods VP of Product Josh Elman .
The former Greylock investor is well known for his product chops from jobs at Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.
Elman joined Robinhood in early 2018 but left late last year, notably before its rash of recent outages that enraged users.I just realized more than anything that the company needed people who had 110% to give, and it wasnt clear that was going to be me, Elman said of Robinhood, now valued at $7.6 billion and struggling to scale.
My first passions and all the things Ive talked about over the years have been social and media.For now, IRL is a part-time gig, where hell be heading up a Secret Projects division.
While most apps try to suck more of our time, he sees IRL as a chance to give this precious resource back to people.
Though he insists Robinhoods great, Im a very happy shareholder.Events without bordersWe were on a tear, hitting a stride with usaging and growth related to real life events, says Shafi.
Then this happened, motioning on our Zoom call to the COVID-19 reality were now stuck in.
We realized we had to pull all of our content because it wasnt happening.Today IRLs iOS app launches a redesign of its Discover home screen content to center on virtual events people can attend from home.
Theres now tabs for gaming, podcasts, TV and EDU, as well as music, food, lifestyle and a catch-all fun section.
Each event can be added to your calendar that syncs with Google Cal, or Liked to add it to your profile that friends and fans can follow.
You also can instantly launch a group chat about the event in IRL, or share it to Instagram Stories or another messaging app.If you cant find something public to do, you can make plans with friends using the composer with suggestions like Lets video chat, Zoom workout, gaming sesh or Netflix party.
That instantly sets up a calendar event you can invite people to.
And if youre not sure when you want to host, IRLs Soon option lets you keep the schedule vague so you and friends can figure out when everyones available.
Indeed, 50% of IRL plans start out as Soon, Shafi reveals, identifying a gap in rigid time/date calendars.Beyond individual events, IRL also wants to make it easier to develop habits by letting you subscribe to workout, meditation and other schedules.
With sports seasons suspended, IRL lets people sync with calendars of hip-hop album releases and more instead.
Or you can subscribe to an influencers life and digitally accompany them to events.
The goal is that IRL will be able to merge offline events back into its content recommendations as social distancing subsides.The biggest challenge for IRL will be tuning its event recommendation algorithm.
It has lost a lot of the traditional relevance signals about events, like how close they are to your home, how much they cost or if theyre even in your city.
Transitioning to In Remote Life means a global range of happenings is now available to everyone, and because theyre often free to host, many lonely low-quality events have sprung up.
That makes it much tougher for IRL to determine what to show.For now, its basing recommendations on what you engage with most on its home screen, but I found that can make the initial experience very hit-or-miss.
The top events in each category were rarely exciting.
But IRL is planning to beef up its onboarding process to ask about your interests, and integrate with Spotify so it knows which musicians online concerts youd want to attend.Still, Shafi thinks IRL is already better than asocial alternatives.
Our main age range is 13 to 25, college and post-college metropolitan areas and across college campuses.
Our average user has never used a calendar before, or theyve just used a default calendar like Gcal or iCal.A cure for lonelinessHopefully, IRL will take a more serious swing at helping friends realize theyre free at the same time and can hang out.
While Down To Lunch failed in this space, now Facebook Messenger and Instagram are exploring it with their auto-status feature, and location apps like Snap Map and Zenly could adapt to share not just where you are, but if you have the intention to hang out.How can we use just a little bit of nudging, transparency or suggestion to get people to just do one more thing per month?, Shafi asks.
IRL is trying to figure out how to let you passively share that I have 2 hours free in a way that never makes you feel rejected if they dont respond.Facebook did launch a standalone Events calendar app back in 2016, but later paired down the calendaring features, folded it in with restaurant recommendations and renamed it Local.
As big as Facebook is, it can only do so many things insanely well, Elman says of his old employer.
They could do more [on Events], but its never been the juggernaut like photos.Shafi is happy to have the opportunity in such a foundational space.
He describes the concept of the calendar as one hes sure will outlive him, so its worth the effort to make it social no matter how long it takes though Im sure his investors like Goodwater Capital, Founders Fund, Kleiner Perkins and Floodgate hope itll find a way to monetize eventually.Revenue could come in the form of selling access to events through the app, or letting promoters and local businesses pay for enhanced discovery.
For now, though, IRL is building a deeper connection with event and content publishers with the upcoming launch of its free Add To Calendar button they can build into their sites and emails.
Elman says several services charge for these buttons that integrate with Apple and Googles calendars, but IRL hopes giving them away will help fill its app with things to do, whatever that might be.Our tagline is live your best life.
Its not judgmental.
If your best life is playing video games on your couch with your homies, we dont judge you for that.