Why aren't we talking to our neighbors?
+ three-martini lunches are endangered, not extinct. 🍸
Good morning everyone. Hope you had a lovely weekend. I spent the weekend in Philip Johnson’s Wolfhouse with friends while attending a wedding in Beacon. Here’s the link if you want to stay somewhere special upstate that isn’t an overpriced hotel.
Today’s letter is about Andy Dunn’s new app which is aimed to solve the adult loneliness epidemic, I embarked on nail salon tourism and what I witnessed shocked me, and the genetic startup founder comparing the discomfort of IVF to waxing and Botox.
“Doing things with people you love should be as easy as calling an Uber.”
It’s rare that we get an ambitious startup that is trying to solve an ambitious problem — especially one that isn’t for 18-34-year-old early adapters.
Bonobos Co-Founder Andy Dunn, famous for acquiring customers for mere pennies on Facebook during the company’s peak (Bonobos was later sold to Walmart), has started a new company called Pie. Pie aims to solve the adult loneliness epidemic. Pie, which raised $11.5mm for their Series A with Forerunner Ventures leading the round and Twitter co-founder Ev Williams increasing his investment, “recreates the magic of Facebook events circa 2009,” according to Forerunner’s founder and partner Kirsten Green.
Here’s the gist: you download the app (the service is only available in Chicago right now), upload a photo of yourself and add your interests, and then you can scroll through and post about different types of hangs. According to WSJ, about two dozen happenings were visible to a new account holder for a mid-September week, “among them outdoor yoga, a beach cleanup, a get-together for writing letters by hand and an event to share stories of crying.” The app has 20,000 monthly active users and is growing 40% month over month, according to Dunn.
The problem Dunn is is trying to solve is loneliness. Last year, the United States Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy called the loneliness epidemic in our country a pandemic. “Given the significant health consequences of loneliness and isolation, we must prioritize building social connection the same way we have prioritized other critical public health issues such as tobacco, obesity, and substance use disorders.”
Why are Americans so lonely? I emailed Dunn to get his POV, but in the meantime, this is what I think: