You know the drill. You want to meet up with a few friends for happy hour -- or find out where your crew is at during Blues on the Green or some other big festival. But, 15 group texts later and everyone is still trying to decide which bar to hit or how to spot each other in a sea of concert-goers.
Aaron Benz thinks there's a better way to cut the chase -- that satisfying moment when you and your gang are all in the same place ready to clink bottles or sprawl out on the picnic blanket. And Benz quit a pretty stellar job and bootstrapped a startup with his savings to prove it.
Benz's new app, Zync Up, launched in the App Store today. It lets users set up a meeting spot, invite friends and, 15 minutes before the meeting time, the app shows you where each other are in the city. Zync Up also has an agreement with Lyft that lets Zync Up users one-click to a ride screen that includes their current location and the destination. One more click and your ride is on its way.
The idea behind this is that many people end up using several apps to do one simple thing -- meet up with your people. Benz said that a lot of people start by contacting a friend to meet up and then they browse Yelp or other discover apps before starting that dreaded back and forth conversation about where is the best place to meet.
"You shouldn't have to have three, four or five apps just to go out," he said. "It should be one easy, seamless experience."
Benz sees the app as part of a shift in thinking about how we meet up. Just like we now tap on a name to call someone without ever typing in their number, he sees people doing the same thing to meet people without tapping in addresses or debating how to meet up. It forces whoever is initiating the meet up to pick a spot and a time, and people can accept or not.
"We want to focus on the experience and the people," Benz said. "It's not just about technology. It's about the actual human and the human experience in our lives."
Think of it as Google Calendars meets Where Are You app meets Lyft -- plus the standard Google search option. Benz baked into the app a feature that protects your location until just before your planned event, when it starts sharing locations with confirmed invites.
Benz envisions it being used largely by millennial for social meetings, but he thinks its precise location finding could be huge at colleges where addresses are largely irrelevant or unavailable and for professionals meeting up with team members for a dinner after a conference or grueling work day.
Currently the Zync Up team is Benz working full-time and two developers on contract. And the company is aiming to close a seed funding round from angel investors by next month.
Overcoming Cancer and Quitting an Awesome Job to Chase a Dream
Benz went to college outside Philadelphia at Eastern University. He had been a star high school lacrosse player, and he was ready to join a team that hadn't won a playoff game in a long time. But bad news came just as he was ready to dive in. He was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s disease, and he'd spend the next few months undergoing chemotherapy.
But he pushed through, learning along the way that he has a high tolerance for pain -- something that has translated into a strength in the startup world where rejection and disappointment typically abound before funding, product launches and recognition happen.
During college, Benz worked for Brown-Foreman, owner of Jack Daniels and several other major liquor brands. He built the company a performance management system to show which programs and promotions had proven results.
Not long after, he was connected with Accenture, the global consulting and services company. Benz moved to Austin for the job and started using big data skills to help the company grow and climb the corporate ladder.
"I was getting promoted fast and getting exposure that I couldn't believe," he said.
Benz is 24 now, and he understands how that can impact perception.
"I never told anybody my age because one, they wouldn't believe it, and, two, they'd see me in a different light," he said. "I was just saying 'look at my work and what I've actually done.'"
It was during his work and travels with Accenture that he realized an opportunity.
He often worked with a team that would go out to dinner.
"Getting people together, figuring out a time and place and who wants to go back to their hotel room to shower or get out of their work clothes or whatever is a hot mess," he said. "You're texting each other back and forth... and it drove me crazy. So I was like 'what if I can do this really easily and take all this and make it one step and go.'"
Benz started working on the idea as a side project, cranking on nights and weekends. He didn't want to leave Accenture -- things were just going too well. But he decided to make a lot of big decisions fast.
"It got the point where it was like 'look man, you've either got to do this full time or you're basically leaving your baby in a dumpster because it's never going to grow up," he said. "And that's when it was like 'alright, it's now or never.'"
