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UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Penn State students Kenny Dundorf and Andrew Simpson are firm believers in the value of face-to-face interaction. Sure, they’re the co-founders of a new mobile application — but it comes with a twist designed to get people off their smartphones.
In keeping with the app’s namesake, the aim of Someonew is to bring strangers together with mutual interests and pave the way to friendship.
“I came up with this idea because I noticed that everywhere I went around campus, or even on the bus, people were glued to their phones,” said Simpson, a Laurel, Maryland native. “I also noticed I was the same way. It made it hard for me to meet people and have conversations with people I didn’t know.”
When new users download Someonew, they’re prompted to fill in their top five interests or passions. The app will send push notifications when two users with similar profiles are in close proximity to each other.
“You’re able to thrust yourself into spontaneous conversation with a stranger about something you love,” said Dundorf, a Hillsborough, New Jersey native.
Dundorf said the app is currently targeted toward first-year students at Penn State who may find the large student population to be “daunting,” though it serves other segments looking to find “meaningful connections” as well.
“Our ideology is that you never know who you might pass on the street,” he said. “You could be passing your next best friend, your husband or wife, or business partner.”
Once the co-founders committed to Someonew over the summer, they were out testing the concept the next day. As for Dundorf’s success, he said he managed to have conversations ranging from 45 minutes to four hours with “random people.”
Though it shares similarities with other platforms like Tinder, Someonew is not meant to be superficial or solely text-based, Dundorf stressed.
“Whenever you get a match, we won’t show you the person’s profile,” Dundorf said. “We won’t show you anything until both parties have met because we don’t want it to turn into a dating app.”
As Someonew moved forward in the development stage and entered the App Store in beta mode, the fees began to add up for the student entrepreneurs. At the recommendation of an advanced entrepreneurship professor, the duo applied to Lion LaunchPad for funding of promotional materials, backend server hosting, and a professional support email.
Anne Hoag, the co-director of Lion LaunchPad and director of the Intercollege Minor in Entrepreneurship and Innovation, or ENTI, said the initiative is the “one place that undergraduates can go for very specific mentoring and microgrants.”