Lyman Starmer was sitting on his front porch when the idea hit him.
It was Election Day, and the Wolfson High School senior was mulling about the echo chamber of social media, the way it drives people apart rather than bringing them together.
The result of that mulling: Perspective, a social media platform that aims to promote thoughtful discussion and reward those willing to engage rather than shout at each other.
Within months, Starmer and fellow student Kaden Powell had begun the process of turning that idea into a startup.
In May, Perspective Inc. had moved into the UNF Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation and started bringing on advisors, including Matt Kane, the founder of Jacksonville-based payroll technology company Greenshades, and Jason Parry, who used to head up strategic investments at Florida Blue.
By September, the company had raised its first round of seed funding, bringing in $120,000 in exchange for future equity in the company.
A beta version of the app was rolled out earlier this month — a process that saw the 17-year-old founders stay up for 38 Redbull-fueled hours during the final sprint. An updated version of the app was released a few weeks ago, with plans to go broad in coming weeks.
At the heart of the social media app will be an algorithm still being developed that will evaluate comments based on things like level of rhetoric, willingness to engage with the points made by other posters and openness to engage in discussion. Users start out being asked 15 questions about topics like abortions and gun control, with followup questions each week used to gauge how the user’s thinking is changing.
The goal isn’t to lead users to any particular point of view but to foster an environment in which people with opposing views can still converse and collaborate.
That’s the long-term dream.
Short-term, Starmer and Powell are focused on their next funding round, in which they’re looking to raise $1.5 million, and are interviewing for a Thiel Fellowship, which comes with $100,000 and support from the Thiel Foundation.
If it all comes together, the duo said, their app could change both social media conversations and the impact those conversations have on the world.
“We can actually create a better society,” Starmer said. “There’s so much potential.”
