Finding furniture on Craigslist can wield some pretty strange interactions, but finding a roommate can be downright creepy.
Serial entrepreneur Michael Williams experienced the helplessness of trying to find a roommate online when he was moving from Venice to Santa Monica. So, he decided to create an alternative to the Craigslist or Facebook post.
YoRoomie launched in the app store this week as a simplified, transparent way to find a new roommate. The app asks you where you are moving to (or if you're looking for a roommate) and then helps you filter by age, gender, and price. Once you have explored the map and found a match you can message with the person directly through the app.
“YoRoomie is more about the people. It is a safe and secure way to message and you're not posting an ad for yourself, exposing yourself to the general population,” said Williams. “With an encrypted email, you have a mask and there’s no transparency. We are making everything transparent because the user has their social identity attached to them.”
Williams built the app in just over a month and believes simplicity is the key to it catching on with millennials. The app currently connects to user's Facebook profiles, but Williams intends to incorporate Instagram as well.
“We’ve had an immense amount of traction early on and we’re headed in a pretty unique direction by keeping this simplistic. We already have users in China and Europe but we’re focusing on LA because it's the market we know best and where we are from.”
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