Q&A: Friendshippr’s Ramy Assaf
Want a special camera lens from abroad? Need important documents delivered but don’t trust snail mail to get them there on time and intact? Running out of your signature perfume? Enter Friendshippr, a revolutionary new app that turns your Facebook friends into couriers. We talked to founder Ramy Assaf to give us the scoop, from how the app works and who it’s for to what he learned along the way to making it live.
Give us a glimpse into the early days of Friendshippr. How did you come up with the idea?
I was literally running out of my favorite deodorant, Old Spice High Endurance. Since they don’t sell it in Dubai, I would get it from my friends/family traveling from the states. I had to figure out who was traveling next and ask someone if they could bring me some. I thought there should be an easier way to figure this out.
I approached Mohamed Hamedi who became a partner/advisor on building it. I gave him my example of the deodorant and he was like “Dude – my wife does that all the time!” It’s just an offline activity that hadn’t been digitized or given a proper online platform to organize yet. People use their friends to send/bring stuff already – we didn’t invent that. We just wanted to make it more transparent and effective.
Who is Friendshippr’s target audience? Are there specific cities where you think it will do especially well?
I would say it’s mainly designed for either expats, or just people with an affinity for products from a different country. This probably means they travel a lot or have lived in more than one place. Someone who would have friends spread across different countries.
The pain point that it tries to resolve is highest in places where traditional shipping lags behind or is cost prohibitive, and not all products are available. I see it happening mainly in developing regions like the Middle East, Africa, and Asia. We see a few markets in mind where informal shipping (friend to friend) happens a lot already.
Friendshippr is based on the “share economy”. Give us your definition of what this is.
It’s using the unused capacity of individuals to provide needed services. It’s about moving away from a business to consumer relationship, to a more democratized format where individuals can provide services for each other.
The share economy can touch a spectrum of industries and verticals – and we’re only getting started. We’ve seen things like Couch Surfing, AirBnB, Uber, Kickstarter, Task Rabbit, but haven’t really seen the shipping industry disrupted by the share economy just yet. I think if you play it carefully, it’s possible.
However, I don’t see every single vertical being “disruptable” – is that a word? Some things just require a real professional service – like open heart surgery, that would be weird to see fall into the share economy.
Why is Friendshippr necessary and what makes it special/better than just posting a request on my Facebook wall?
Good question! When you post something on your Facebook, people often don’t realize that it will only be seen by about 15% of your friends on Facebook. There is a lot of noise and content happening and it has to be controlled somehow. The common thing people do is say “Hey is anyone coming from London soon?”
Well, let’s examine that for a second. If you posted that at 10am on a Friday morning – an almost arbitrary 15% of your friends would see it on their feed for the next hour or so. A few hours later and it’s gone in the sea of old posts and noise. Now, that 15% who did see it may have absolutely NO relevance to that post. Meaning, they may not be in London or have any affiliation to London.
With Facebook, the context of a post doesn’t determine who sees the post. Lastly, since you only said “is anyone coming from London?” even if a relevant person saw it – they may be like hey, what does this person even want, and they may disregard it to avoid having to carry some big extra suitcase or extra weight. They don’t know what it is you want them to bring and are discouraged from replying by the lack of transparency.
With Friendshippr, it’s a much more concentrated and intelligent broadcast. You create a post, and based on the context (the route) it will push this to the most relevant people location wise and provide more transparency about the item to be shipped. We use real data to connect people more effectively.
We can imagine how Friendshippr can veer into illicit territory. How do you combat this?
This is a platform for you and your friends to connect. As a user generated content platform, there could always be people that try to abuse the system. Look at Craigslist, eBay, Dubizzle, etc.The important thing here is that you probably should avoid carrying something for someone unless you are completely comfortable.
This is a platform for communication, you are under no obligation to carry anything you don’t want and like anything else you shouldn’t do anything illegal! We encourage everyone to use their best judgement and we try to enforce community guidelines accordingly.
Friendshippr harnesses our connections on Facebook – but what about other social networks? Do you have any plans to expand integration with other platforms?
When it comes to informal shipping, you are most likely to do this with people you know and trust. There has to be that factor. Of the social networks, the one with the highest potency of “friendship” between connections is Facebook. It’s not a random follow like Twitter or a business oriented contact like LinkedIn. On average globally, people have 200 1st degree friends on Facebook, with 2nd degree it can be up to 40,000. It’s a significant network to work with for now.
What are your hopes for Friendshippr in the next five years?
I hope we can introduce a new word to society. If you forget your laptop charger somewhere, and your friend gets it for you, that should be like, “Yeah she friendshipped it for me”. Like when you “Google” something – I’d like to hear people use the term friendshipping whenever they think of this activity.
Congratulations on the investments you raised! What was the biggest challenge you faced when securing investors?
We aren’t starting with a revenue model – so the challenge is just finding the right type of investors that undevcrstand what we are trying to accomplish. We have good friends and a network that believes in us and the project.
You recently pitched at LeWeb. Tell us a bit about your experience. What did you learn?
Friendshippr was selected for something called the Pitch In Style, an initiative by PayPal and Uber. It was great, I met David Marcus (the President of PayPal) in the back of an Uber van – pretty interesting experience. He was cool and he gave solid feedback and tips on how to make the product more frictionless. I can’t tell you all the secrets though.
The region is full of promising entrepreneurs and startups. Give us some concrete advice for those hoping to follow in your footsteps.
Stick to one thing, don’t try and do a bunch of entrepreneurial things at once. I meet so many people that are working on like two or three projects and trying to see which one works out. My feedback is that none of them will work out until you devote yourself completely to it. Stop trying to do multiple things, it’s hard enough to do one!
Most tech entrepreneurs these days can’t stop at just one start-up. You’ve launched Friendshippr and you’ve previously been involved with Laimoon.com. Give us the scoop on your next big project.
Hey one thing at a time – remember, that’s the secret!
WE SAID THIS: You can download Friendshippr now for Apple from the App Store or for Android from Google Play. Even Santa’s using it!
