Planning anything with your friends is a nightmare. Why, you may ask? Well, consider you have a plan at first, and everyone tells an emphatic YES at first. However, with their busy schedule and other things coming up, they tend to lose track of the plan, and it never happens in the end. The problem arises in tracking time and the date at which the plan has to be executed, and its where Planmesh comes into the picture.
Planmesh is an application that lets users plan anything in the easiest way possible. Add your friends on the app, choose the plan and date, and your set. It’s quite the advanced tool for users to quickly decide and build on a game plan to execute the decided plan. Its more targeted towards executing the plan rather than just scrapping it away. Speaking with Jose Togbe, the CEO of Planmesh, Venture Mirror got a brief insight over the company and its operations. To learn more as to how the interview went? You can read it below.
What is the startup / product / venture about? Give us a brief description of it.
Planmesh is a social planning app that helps you create and share the things you want to do, in the future, with your friends. Whether you’re interested in a mid-day coffee break, a happy hour after a long day, or a hike at a nearby trail, you can plan it on Planmesh. The platform lets you suggest activities or places you’re interested in and share when you’re available to get-together without looking desperate. Planmesh offers an in-app chat experience to plan out your group events or chat one on one with a friend. Polls are also available to help you finalize details so your friends can help you find the best time, activity, or location for your event.
How many co-founders are there? Please introduce them and their backgrounds.
Jose Togbe (CEO) and Guy Bofossa (COO) are brother-in-laws, and both studied entrepreneurship at Babson College, the global leader in entrepreneurship education, for 23 years. Jose has a background in user experience, with previous experience working for Morgan Stanley, Citi, and AT&T. Guy has a finance and operations background with extensive experience working for Wall Street firms in the Investments and Financial Analysis fields.
How did you come up with the idea? What motivated you to do this?
After graduating from college and starting their day jobs, Jose and Guy found it challenging to make plans with their friends. They were either too busy or didn’t want to deal with the back and forth that came with determining the best time, location, and activity for their get-togethers. So they set out to build a platform focusing on intent so you can know when friends want to meet up for food, drinks, a workout, or to chill. The founders believe that if planning were more straightforward, people would make more plans and have the opportunity to connect on a deeper, more meaningful level around shared experiences.
Who is your target market? Why do you think your product will appeal to them?
Our target market is anyone who is interested in enjoying experiences with the people they care about. Whether you are a power planner (someone who likes to plan often) or someone who wants to see what their friends are up to, Planmesh is for you. At any given moment, we have a number of activities floating in our minds that sometimes never see the light of day. Planmesh wants you to get them out of your head and share them to find out who else wants to do the same.
Who are your competitors? How are you different from them?
Other event platforms offer event listings or focus on location, not intent when it comes to planning. Planmesh, on the other hand, focuses on helping users plan their day-to-day social events and activities with friends. We make this possible by letting users make plans with or without the event details while having full control over their privacy settings. Traditional planning platforms require that users have most, if not all, the details (location, time, and activity) ready upfront before setting up their event, which places an enormous burden on the person initiating the plan.
What are the future plans with the product/startup? Any new features you are planning on?
We are working on several features to provide our users with an end to end experience when it comes to planning. For example, we’d like to allow our users to view location listing details such as hours of operation, ratings, photos, and more from within the app to help them finalize their location selection when making plans. In addition, we’re looking into implementing a photos feature that would allow users to upload pictures related to events they attend while tagging friends who are included in the photos.