When Bradford Bishop and his wife, Amanda, took a getaway weekend, they spent one of their nights outdoors building a fire. Another couple soon walked up to them and started chatting and the four of them immediately hit it off.
"Those chances are great but it seems far in between," Bishop said. "We wanted an app that would make it happen more often, where you can find someone with the same interests."
He began to work on Cuplr, which would match couples based on interests to help them make friends. But once the idea got off the ground, Bishop soon realized the technology could be applied even further.
"When we got the tech involved, it was, 'Oh, we need to make something more complete,'" he said.
They added a cryptocurrency component, called the "CPLR token," which allows users to make in-app purchases. There's also a map feature allowing businesses to share their profiles, letting users find companies similar to the ones they love.
"With the app, we’re using the same algorithm that matches people to people, to people to places," he said. While he lives in Gulf Breeze, Florida, he has begun his focus on Tampa Bay-based businesses. "We will tell you steakhouses around here that are comparable so you're not just going onto Google. It's meant to introduce you to new things and new places."
Companies can also buy advertisements within the app, which would pop up as suggested matches as the user is swiping, similar to dating apps.
Eventually, Bishop said he wants to open three "Cuplr Cafes" in Tampa, which are coffee shops that users could meet at tied to the app. Bishop acknowledges it is a lot for one startup but believes the technology allows them to go in a variety of directions.
"It's like, 'We have all this technology, we have to use it,'" he said. "Because it's hard to meet new people who do the same things we do and go to the same restaurants and the same places."
The company has eight employees and has raised $385,000 through cryptocurrency tokens. Bishop hopes to have 200,000 users in the next six months and have Tampa, Dallas, Las Vegas and Houston all functionally using the app.
"We want to emphasize the social on social media," he said. "We want to encourage people to be social and go places, versus other social media sites couldn't care less as long as you're staring at the screen."
