Best Startup
Nibble is your social genie that grants your three real world social wishes in one simple app:
- Meet great people
- Discover new places
- Have a seamless organising experience
Our mission is to create a world where everyone’s social lives are easier to organise and a much richer experience.
Tell us about yourself?
I (Mark) met Ciara when we were both working at EY, and Tim at Durham Uni.
When Nibble was first kicking off both Ciara and Tim were keen to be involved, and we discovered that in a room together we bounced off each other really well.
Since then, Nibble has really grown thanks to our combination of personalities and life experiences.
If you could go back in time a year or two, what piece of advice would you give yourself?
A big one for us would be trademarking. We thought of the name “Nibble” when we were still very much at a concept stage, so waited to submit a trademark until we had moved things along.
Annoyingly this meant that someone put an application in before us which included one of the same categories.
All this did was mean it cost us more for a long drawn-out battle when we could have just kicked the process off earlier.
I’d recommend to any new founders out there: as soon as you are set on a name, check it on the trademark website and get your application submitted as quickly as possible, they do take quite a long time to process!
What problem does your business solve?
Today when busy, technology-savvy people want to go on dates or organise something with their friends and partner, the have to trawl TripAdvisor for a half decent idea, pester their non-responsive friends or swipe through hundreds of people.
This is really frustrating because we live in a world where technology could be created to make all of this simple and hassle-free.
What is the inspiration behind your business?
As we came out of the pandemic, we were all ready to jump back into our social lives – be it Mark going on dates, Ciara planning activities with her partner or Tim catching up with friends.
But a combination of low quality matches, struggling to find new places to try and a nightmare organising experience left the experiences feeling hollow. We knew there had to be a better way and that’s where the idea of Nibble was born.
What is your magic sauce?
As the social genie in your pocket, Nibble grants your three real world social wishes. There are other apps who have addressed individual wishes, but none so far have been able to bring all three together in a single seamless app.
Then, as we continue to grow, we will be able to gather ever more really interesting data which we will be able to utilise to give some really accurate, helpful and interesting recommendations using AI.
In fact, one of the investors we are currently working with in our funding round is a data scientist who has some really exciting ideas around using some of the additional data points Nibble allows us to collect to give you really effective recommendations.
What is the plan for the next 5 years? What do you want to achieve?
We have actually created quite a detailed plan of what we want to achieve year by year and it can be broken down into a few categories:
- Market coverage – we would like to be a household name across the dating and social spaces with people using the app for dating, relationships and friends
- Recommendations – in 5 years time the aim is for our AI capabilities to be a key differentiator as to why you would choose to use Nibble
- Expansion – finally we are hoping to have developed an optimal expansion method and to have been able to replicate it in additional countries
What is the biggest challenge you’ve faced so far?
Nibble initially started out as a dating app, but as we worked together with James, the idea really grew, so when we pitched to investors, we would say it’s a dating app, oh but it’s so much more.
Not only was that an ineffectual elevator pitch, but it also didn’t say what Nibble was really about.
Additionally, it also meant we were dropped into the dating app category where we really didn’t want to be because it didn’t summarise Nibble and it’s such a crowded market.
So as a group of co-founders, we blocked out a whole day together and sat round my kitchen table to first and foremost decide what category of app Nibble should sit in. I think it was Ciara who first came up with the social genie idea and then she casually dropped in “oh and then we could summarise Nibble into three wishes”. Tim and I LOVED the idea and it tested really well.
From that point on it wasn’t hard to summarise the three wishes and we’ve taken it from there.
How do people get involved/buy into your vision?
Anyone interested in joining the Nibble community can go on our website to read a bit more about us and sign up to receive a download in preparation for our launch.
We’re also in the process of raising our next funding round, so if you’re interested in learning more about Nibble from that perspective, please do get in touch with me (mark@mabcapital.co.uk), and we’d love to tell you more about us.
Finally, once we have closed the next funding round we’ll also be hiring for a number of roles, and if working in a start-up is what you’re looking for, then we it would be great to hear from you.
