Startup profile: Panion - an interest-based social network

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Panion is a startup working for the development of a mobile social network that helps people connect based on specific activities and interests. It is based in Malmö, started in 2017 and is looking to raise EUR 500k

What are the names of founders, their management roles, and how many full-time paid employees do you have?

Founder - Melanie Aronson, CEO
We have one full-time paid employee (not the founder) as of now but hoping that will change very soon.

What exactly is Panion and why is it different from what’s available in the market today?

Panion is a keyword-searchable social app that helps you make genuine connections, especially when moving to a new place. We use your common interests and values to match you with potential friends nearby and allow you to run filterable searches to find partners for shared activities.

Many apps on the market for making friends focus heavily on physical appearance and allow you to write paragraph descriptions of yourself. As a result, if you look at most social platforms, you find quite a few empty profiles, as no one likes to write about themselves in that way.

With Panion we make it fun and easy to tag your profile with keywords, offering a lot of info about who you are, with little to no effort. We also wanted to provide a platform that didn’t require endless swiping, which can often feel quite judgmental, and to instead create something smarter and more efficient.

Why Panion and not Facebook? Why Panion and not a vertical-based app providing a similar value proposition like Strava, for example?

Each social platform has its purpose. Facebook is for keeping tack of people you already know. Most people find it creepy to receive friend requests from perfect strangers. Panion is for meeting new people without the stigma of seeming creepy because everyone on Panion is there for the same purpose. Facebook also feels like it offers too many services and many people are turning away. Sometimes we like to use separate tools to fulfill separate needs in our lives.

While Panion helps you find activity partners, it’s not it’s sole purpose. By viewing an array of interests on someone’s profile, you can really get a sense of someone’s personality and whether or not you might get along. So being able to add a diverse array of interests, makes for a more well-rounded picture of who that person is.

I for one, don’t want to go play tennis with someone who I can’t then have a conversation with about a common interest afterwards over lunch. Panion is trying to promote deeper connections even with an activity partner, because ultimately this leads to an overall better social experience, which improves your mental health and well-being.

How do you validate your idea and what makes you think the value you're creating is important for an user?

We started with a landing page, and in one month had over 2000 sign ups. We then built a beta and were inundated with positive messages and excitement about what Panion could become. Then we invited 20 random people to come test our beta in the office and watched and listened to their needs and what they hoped for Panion’s future. Our process is customer-centric, we want to build something that solves our customer’s needs, therefore are willing to shift and pivot until we feel like we are optimizing our impact on our customers' lives.

How many users do you have and how many are recurring?

We currently have  ~6600  users with ~1900 monthly active users.

How do you market the app?

We use a lot of social media, PR, and creating partnerships.

Who is your competition, are there similar products in the market?

Competitors could be seen as Meetup, Tinder, Gofrendly, Badoo, Shapr, etc. but we feel we bring something different to the table because we are interest-focused, completely inclusive, keyword-searchable, and encourage genuine one-on-one interactions, all in one app.

How do you intend to make money, who is your target paying customer?

We believe companies and universities should take responsibility for the social integration of students and employees. Our Enterprise plan offers large companies and universities their own community profile within the app and the ability to search specifically within their internal networks. Students are able to link their profiles to a community, to run targeted searches within that community, and to create their own social events that others can find and request to join based on their interests. So our paying customers would be the companies and the universities.

We will also allow local businesses to offer targeted promotions that add value to our customers. For example, if you match with someone on the keyword YOGA, a local yoga studio might provide a 20% discount for 'panions' who come together to take a class.

What is the biggest challenge you need to solve in the next few months?

We need to raise funds to pay and expand our team. We need to break through the digital noise and get the word out about our product. We want to onboard 1 or 2 pilot clients to start developing our enterprise features.

Are you looking for investment funding? If yes, how much and for what?

Yes. 400,000 Euro.

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