Welcome to Built In Chicago’s newest weekly feature, Tech Spotlight of the Week! In this series, we’ll be highlighting locally built tech apps and products at the end of each business week. If you’d like to be considered for inclusion in the future, send your pitch to [email protected].
This week, we’re featuring a new social app that’s hot off the presses.
(which officially launched just this week) is on a mission to blur the boundaries between disparate social cliques in order facilitate more comfortable ways for friend groups to connect and socialize.
We’ve all dragged a friend or two along to an unfamiliar social environment to alleviate any awkwardness of first-time interactions. Cliq is aiming to digitize that experience, allowing users to create virtual friend groups that can meet and make plans with one another ahead of time, providing a social opportunity for friends to meet new people and explore the city.
It works like this: download the app (which is available for download in both the Apple and Google Play stores) and invite your friends to create a group. Then, you can browse other groups from users nearby and invite them into a group chat. From there, groups can talk together about interests or weekend plans and exchange contact info. If your groups really hits it off, the app will trigger a “Cliq Event,” an event suggestion it pulls from a pool of curated experiences and events throughout Chicago, like drink specials at a nearby bar or a Breaking Bad trivia night.
“It’s been very exciting to see people use the app to meet new groups of friends,” Founder and CEO Nick Wieczorek said in a company statement. “People are more prone to leave their comfort zone with their friends by their side, and we’re thrilled that so far, people have been doing just that.”
Wieczorek, a Chicago native, built the app specifically with the Second City in mind, with the hopes of fostering more social experiences for Chicagoans who find themselves at the same local haunts (with the same group of friends) week after week. Founded in 2014, Cliq’s already got the support of a seed round of funding and is poised for an adventuresome 2016.
Images via Shutterstock and Cliq.
Do you know of any Chicago tech companies we should be covering? Send us an email at [email protected].
