The Village

App Idea · Jan 4, 2025

Basic Concept

Non-monetary exchange.

Volunteering, but personal.

Need: People want to meet friends who have their back and do things together and for each other.

App/website aiming to facilitate volunteer opportunities to help people “build their village”

Inspirations

• Mutual Aid
  • Everyone contributes something
  • One-to-one direct action
• Buy Nothing
  • No payment allowed
• TaskRabbit
  • Task/action as unit of organization
• Social media
  • Connect with existing friends
• Facebook groups
  • Issue/need-specific communities
  • People with specific hobbies/skills can help others
• Dating apps
  • Make new friends
• Community bulletins/Nextdoor
  • Geographically based suggestions/groups
• Airbnb verification and review system
  • System for trust building
  • Filtering out bots / bad actors
• Couchsurfing
• Bonusly: $200 per week that you can give out publicly to coworkers to show recognition
  • “Kudos” – give kudos for someone doing a good job, includes a description of what you’re giving kudos for; 100 kudos per month

“Community Friend”

A person who is there for you and is part of the community, who may or may not be a friend that you spend time with.

User profiles

• Main profile element: wants/offers, e.g. “person to watch baby”, “helper to build IKEA furniture”
• interests
• phase of life
• living situation
• boring details:
  • name
  • email
  • phone

Matching

• algorithm finds matches based on profile to show users
• Import contacts and import Facebook friends

Connections/Messaging

• connection requests
• in-app messaging only for connections with the exception of responding to posts/favors

Posts/favors

• can be private or public
  • private is visible only to your connections
  • public is visible to anyone (anyone can message)

Ratings/Verification

• users can give reviews to others
• Face-photo verification
• App should feel like a safe place

Mutual relationships

• for each connection, you can see what things you did for each other

Examples

• mowing lawn
• math tutoring
• fixing stuff
• building IKEA furniture
• borrowing a car to go to Costco for someone with a Costco membership and no car
• helping an old person make a video
• helping someone move stuff with your pickup truck

Demographics

• people trying to make friends
• new parents in need of people to watch their kid
• retired people just wanting to help out
• 18+ only, don’t want kids on the app

Favors

The basic unit/action is the favor.

Public vs. private favors. Public favors can be seen and done by anyone; private favors only by your village.

Start with a small, finite number of favors you can ask.

Doing favors (and receiving kudos/karma/points) gives you favors that you can then ask.

Villages:

The basic unit of community. Similar to a Facebook group.

• Moms’ groups
• Parents at a school
• A condo complex/apartment building
• A neighborhood
• A commune
• A ballroom dance company

The Map

Shows all public favors in blue and private favors in green on a map in your neighborhood.

Skills and offers to get perks:

• Owning a car
• Handy
• Can carry stuff
• Techy
• Pickup Truck
• Costco membership
• …

Business Plan

Revenue

• Grants from techy philanthropists
• “buy the developers a coffee”
• Ads
  • Charge non-profits who want to advertise volunteering opportunities.
  • Banner ads
• Gala
  • Invite the most prolific volunteers to the gala.
  • Rich people can pay. (amount not public)
• Get bought by Meta

Marketing

• “People who want to help people who want to help them back”
• Spotify wrapped with number of favors done/asked for, types of favors done/asked for, most active relationship, number of new relationships, month with the most favors, etc.
• Reaching out to rotary clubs, moms groups, churches
• Ben Franklin effect: “He that has once done you a kindness will be more ready to do you another, than he whom you yourself have obliged.”
• Platforms to advertise on:
  • social media: LinkedIn, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook
  • Google ads / Facebook ads

Work Required

Minimum Viable Product

• Starting in DC, New York, and Santa Barbara, with friends
• Advertise there only
• Profile with what you have to offer
• Can create favors
  • Public and Private
• Search
  • By location and job
• Messaging
• Connections/Friends
• Ratings and Verification

App Description

Social media app called “Village” in which you post “favors”. There is an “ask a favor” page for creating favors. These are something like “mow my lawn”, or “help me move into my apartment” or “babysit my three-year-old on Saturday”. They have a date and a time, a location, a list of skills/offers that the asker brings to the table, and the number of favor-doers needed. Once created, these favors, organized by type, show up on a map where your friends can see them, tap on them to open their favor page (with details) and swipe right to commit to doing them with you. As a favor-doer, you can filter favors by type: handyman work, emotional labor, pickup-truck needed, etc., as well as by public or private (some favors, like taking care of one’s child, you might only want your trusted friends to do for you.) So that’s the map and filter page. Then, there is a tracking page called “your favors”, in which you can see your stats: how many favors have you asked for, and how many have you received? What is your rate of completion for favors you committed to? Etc. Then there is a page for managing the favors you have created and the ones you are responding to.

When you click on one of those favors, it takes you to that favor page. There are two versions of this page: one for the asker, and the other for the doer(s). The asker page shows the profiles of people offering to do the favor, and lets you swipe right to confirm that they can do the favor.