There is a universal process for two strangers to become friends. I call it the Friendship Staircase, because both individuals have to put in work to get to each subsequent level. While each step will look different for every friendship, the process is generally the same:
Climbing the Friendship Staircase is Hard
There is friction at every step of the Friendship Staircase, which causes friendships to fail to form or to wither and fall apart. This doesn’t mean a falling out or dispute. Think of how many potential friendships have ended with a text message like, “That was super fun, let’s get together again soon!” Until a friendship is integrated into your life–you expect to see your friend regularly because you both [insert thing], and time together is part of the routine of your life–it takes a lot of effort and intentionality to develop and maintain a friendship.
It Seems Like the Friendship Staircase is Getting Harder
Particularly since COVID, there has been a lot of focus on what has unfortunately been termed “The Loneliness Crisis” or “Loneliness Epidemic.” Despite nearly all of us knowing we need friends in our lives and most of us wanting more friends in our lives, our number of friendships keep going down, and technology has somehow made it feel harder to meet people and make friends despite how tech has made communication instant, easy, and cheap, and exponentially boosted connectedness.
Existing Apps Only Solve for the Bottom Step (Getting Introduced to People)
This a widespread and prominent problem, and a lot of folks have made or are making efforts to solve it with technology. Bumble has BumbleBFF, a Bumble-like app focused on friendship. There are myriad startups focused on friendship-making within specific niches (like Peanut, a friendship-making app for pregnant women and new moms). Meetup.com and local groups on Facebook, Nextdoor, and Reddit offer platforms for folks to organize real-life events around specific interests or activities.
Despite all the effort, attention, and money put into apps to do for friendship what dating apps like Tinder did for romantic relationships, nothing has yet clearly worked. One study found that 84% of Americans have never used a “friendship app” (compared to 65% who have used a dating app).
Why is this, if people really do value friendship over romantic love and marriage?
My hypothesis is that the hormone-driven motivation to find love and sex is enough to push us (men and women) past the awkwardness, friction, and pain of dating and dating apps. But the need for friendship is felt less acutely, and so the same friction and awkwardness we tolerate in dating apps is enough to stop us from using or even trying friendship apps.
Like dating apps, existing friendship apps seem focused entirely on connecting people at the top of the funnel. You don’t know where to meet people? Meet on our app, or at this dinner with five strangers, or at a weekly meetup for __. But then it remains on you to introduce yourself, make small talk, get a phone number, set up the first or second real-life hangout.
What If It Were a Friendship Funnel Instead?
It seemed to me that a technology-based solution would have to approach creating friendships in a fundamentally different way from how we’ve approached technology for dating. A working solution would have to make every step of the Friendship Staircase easier. In fact, a truly effective solution would invert the staircase entirely.
This is the mission of Covalish–to invert the Friendship Staircase into a Friendship Funnel. Rather than put in the work to climb, just step in (sign-up) and slide into friendships. We do the work of introducing, setting up meetings, gathering feedback, and keeping you connected with the people you like. We identify users we think you’d get along with and set a day, time, and place for you two to meet. Have an easy conversation with no awkward pauses by simply talking over the questions and prompts in the app. After you’re done, let us know if you’d like to meet them again. If you both say you do, we’ll schedule another meet-up (and another, and another, so long as you both tell us it’s what you want).
