Meet the Creators of the weCliq Social App

Brown University alums Robert Gillett and Marc Howland, creators of the weCliq app

WeCliq is a new and innovative networking app that enables users to connect and meet with local and surrounding people and/or groups via real-time photos, virtually bringing selfies to life. The app was launched in September by Brown University alumni Robert Gillett and Marc Howland, alongside Harvard University graduate Adam Demuyakor.

BlackEnterprise.com caught up with the millennial techies to talk their new app, the inspiration behind it, and their plans for the future.

Black Enterprise: What is weCliq and how does it work and who is it for?
Gillett: weCliq is an award winning social app that connects people nearby for real-life hangouts. Our app enables you to use recently taken photos to match with other people you’d want to meet in your vicinity.

We are the first Swipe-To-Meet app not exclusively focused on dating. Our users have described our app as the “Snapchat for meeting people.â€ Whether meeting cool people on campus or before a night out, connecting with others in a brand new city, growing your group at a festival, finding romance, or the late-night after-party, weCliq helps you meet fun people nearby seamlessly.

The app is easy to use: 1) Snap a photo 2) Select who you’d like to be matched with 3) Meet up!

What was the inspiration behind the app?
Demuyakor: The idea for weCliq emerged from Robert’s personal experience as a pro-football player in Italy. Frustrated by the language barrier and cautious about approaching random people, he found it difficult to meet and connect with people in the area. Thus, the idea for weCliq was born. After returning stateside, Robert, who studied mechanical engineering at Brown University, reached out to his former college teammate and investment banker turned private equity investor, Marc Howland, to partner in developing the app.

When was your big “a-ha” moment when coming up with the idea?
Gillett: The universal language across the world is photographs. Concurrently, photo-based Swipe-to-Meet apps have become relatively common as well. Our “a-ha” moment came when we realized that (1) these apps all assume that people want to meet for purely romantic reasons and (2) these apps ask you to determine if you want to meet someone based primarily on his/her old, stale pictures. We thought it could be very interesting to attack both of these phenomenons head-on by engineering an app that is (1) NOT exclusively focused on dating and (2) enables people to meet using only new and recently taken photos.

We want to inspire more meetups that are spontaneous and in-the-moment. We’re seeing a growing trend of apps like Instagram and Snapchat that are increasingly focused on enabling users to capture the exciting moments around them as they happen. Why not use this concept and apply it to help people meet as well?

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