It’s Friday at 4 p.m. and anxiety is setting in. You were so busy this week that somehow, it totally slipped you mind to make weekend plans—and now, you’re left frantically texting friends and trying to round something up.
It’s a scenario that Northeastern alum Akaash Yadav and Armaan Gupta often ran into during school, when their schedules were jam packed with classes, jobs and extracurriculars.
“Our question ‘What’s going on tonight?’ would always be answered by ‘I don’t know…’ or ‘I’m down for whatever!’” co-founder Akaash Yadav told BostInno in an email interview. “The worst was when we’d find out the people we wanted to hang out with would be going to a place we didn’t like or vice versa.”
Sound familiar?
Frustrated, the duo sought out to build an app that would make it super easy to see who’s going out, when they’re going out and what they’re doing.
Circus, which just launched its beta test in March, offers users a way to create plans and join their friends’ already existing plans, along with exploring their community and social circles. The idea is, essentially, to help you spend less time stressing over what to do and more time having fun.
On the surface, it sounds a bit like another local app that kicked off last summer, WiGo. But the functionality does have some distinguishing factors. With Circus, a live feed shows you who is going out, where they’re going and how you’re connected. In just a few taps, you can broadcast your own plans. And by focusing on the venue over specific event details (like the exact time), Circus makes it easy for you to separate the meetups you’re actually interested in from the ones you’d probably rather skip. Plus, every plan is ranked my social popularity, so you know which ones are especially hot. Right after launching, Circus' iPhone app was featured on Product Hunt.
Currently, the startup is based out of WeWork South Station.
“We see the city of Boston as an amazing home base," said Yadav. "The student population really helps test out the market for social applications and find out what people want.”
The Android app will be available in the fall, and Yadav promised some major improvements to the current app later this summer. Currently, Circus is in the midst of building a team of people who are specifically interested in location-based services. They plan to bring on engineers (iOS and Rails) and build their growth marketing team in the immediate future.
Image of friends having brunch via lingz/Foap. Screenshot via Circus.
