Dunn’s new project, Pie, is a social app aimed at bringing people together in real life.
Thanks to raising $11.5 million in Series A funding and paying organizers to host events, Pie has grown to more than 130,000 monthly active users, despite being available only in San Francisco and Chicago. But the growing number of users meant that in-person events organized through the app were also becoming increasingly crowded, making it difficult to connect with people.
The young company faced a problem: If hundreds of people show up at an event, how do guests know who to talk to? How can they make friends when they walk into a crowded room surrounded by strangers?
“That’s the beauty of creating a startup,” says Dunn. “The solution creates the problem.”
Fortunately, a possible solution to this problem was not hard to find.
Two event planners at Pie were already working together to create a tool called Sparked Connections, an AI-powered quiz that tries to predict who people will get along best with at a given social event. Pie acquired the two founders, Samir Mahafz and Sam Stubbs, and combined the quiz with certain events, which were called “Sparked by Pie.”
