Longtime engineer and product designer Michael Sayman has been building apps since he was a kid, landing him roles at Facebook, Google, Roblox, and most recently Twitter, where he is often tasked with developing products aimed at a teenage audience. Sayman was only 17 when he joined Facebook, but had already built several apps. Sayman wants to leverage his understanding of what users want from their apps with the launch of Friendly Apps.
Gen Z understands that many of the social apps that have been built to date can be toxic to users and can prevent them from achieving their true goals. The mission of Friendly Apps is to create a suite of apps with a different set of values that are targeted towards helping people with both their physical and mental health in new ways.
Sayman was working at the micro-messaging service. The founder joined the social network in March to build out new product experiences for teens.
The internal product development efforts slowed down after the announcement of the Musk acquisition. He was forced to leave Big Tech to work on his own thing.
Sayman says that it takes a billionaire to acquire a company that he worked at.
He has seen how tech companies develop their products and that is what inspired the idea for Friendly Apps.
Sayman says that a lot of social media products use retention tactics that slow down the well-being and mental health of their users. He says that the companies encouraged the wrong behaviors from their users and have become popular because they are addictive.
They have tactics to keep people coming in.
The problem lies in the product design, as well as the internal goals and metrics of the company.
The structures and incentives within a lot of these social media companies are not set up in a way to encourage long-term thinking around the well-being of the person that is using the product. He says they will try to find other ways of communicating with people they care about through other means.
Friendly apps should be different. Although the startup will take the learnings from social apps and products he helped create for teens, it won't be solely aimed at Gen Z users.
The apps have yet to be created. The startup raised a seed round of $3 million within a week. Ryan Hoover, founder of Product Hunt, was the first to bet on Sayman.
I have known Michael for eight years. He would eventually start his own company. Hoover says that he has a rare ability to deeply intuit human behavior, translate his ideas into clean design, and build quickly.
Sayman has a few different product ideas. Even if they aren't a regular gym-goer or a hardcore fitness advocate, he thinks one app could help people achieve their physical fitness goals.
Another app could help people remember to prioritize their real-world relationships and encourage them to spend time with people they care about in the physical world.
Everyone is doing so many things that we don't actually catch up with them in person.
As time goes by, people don't know each other as well, which can affect mental health. Today's social apps don't help, they only further isolates us, he says. We end up experiencing relationships through a small window of photos.
Sayman thinks a lot of the mental health issues that we start seeing.
The founder plans to bring his second-generation Latino immigrant's perspective to Friendly App's product experiences in order to help address specific hurdles that new immigrants to the U.S. may need to overcome.
These concepts may or may not be among the first apps to launch. The startup plans to test a suite of products, experiences, features, and even various design elements before bringing anything to the public.
Sayman is good at building apps quickly. He will need some time to get the products off the ground and tested. He wants to have something out to the public in 6 months.
Box Group, Weekend Fund, Shrug Capital, Day One Venture, and SRB Ventures are just a few of the seed investors in Friendly Apps.
Sayman says that the company wants to include the perspectives of those outside Silicon Valley.
One angel investor, like myself, is happy that Michael prioritized bringing onboard womxn angel investors like myself, and others like teachers, mothers, students, and immigrants from diverse background.
Sayman points out that the tech industry doesn't gather a lot of investors from places that aren't the tech industry.
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