EP#30- Combatting Social Isolation with Crowdsurf, with Co-Founders Mira Guleri, Serena Davis, and Kyla Windley

[MUSIC PLAYING] If angled the right way, we think that using an amalgamation of these ideas, social technology can kind of mirror and resonate with the cadence of real life interaction rather than create a new small bubble of a world that exists only virtually. So the idea is to use technology to bridge real world, the real world with the tech world. Welcome back to another episode of Everyday Endorphins. This week's episode actually features three guests, and they're all the co-founders of a social activity planning platform called CrowdServe. Kyla, Mira, and Serena are students at Stanford and Harvard University, and across the three of them, they're studying a combination of design, poetry, symbolic systems, neuroscience, computer science, and classics. When I found this out, I was immediately so excited to speak to all of them, given what I'm studying at Washoe, which is philosophy, neuroscience, and psychology. If you're in college and listening to this, then you kind of understand the excitement that comes from getting to talk to someone at a different school who's studying something very similar to you. So that's kind of how I felt. But regardless, it was really wonderful to have the opportunity to speak with all of them. In this episode, we talked about the origin story of CrowdServe and the mission behind creating the app. Although it's still in early stage development, the goal behind CrowdServe is really to help combat issues of social isolation that's ironically a byproduct of social media and living in an increasingly digital world. I'm really excited for all of you to hear this episode. Unfortunately, their fourth co-founder, Sophia, was unable to be present for the recording, but nevertheless, she was there in spirit, and we all had a great time talking about our own experiences with technology, being in college, how we engage with our phones and social media, and our shared passions for creating youth driven solutions to issues around the mental health epidemic. Before we get into the interview, I have a brief message from my sponsor, Anchor. Hi, everyone. Thank you so much for coming onto the podcast. It's so great to have you guys come and talk about all the amazing things that you're doing with CrowdServe. - It's great to be here. - Thanks for having us. - Well, I'm really excited to chat a bit more about what CrowdServe is and how you guys decided to create this social planning platform, and it kind of arose out of the irony of technology creating issues of social isolation. So I'd love for you guys to talk a little bit about how technology is perpetuating issues of social isolation and how that's playing out amongst college kids, amongst people are age. - Yeah, absolutely. So consumer technology, you think like video games, iPhone games, social media, down to their very core, kind of feed on and thus really do perpetuate social isolation, disempowerment, mental health issues, a whole host of issues. But so why is that? Well, basically, it boils down to how these apps operate, which is based on an ad revenue model. So this means that like the more time the individual spend looking at the screen, more money the company makes and the more it grows. So as one might imagine, their algorithms are kind of optimizing to keep us alone and keep us looking at these screens. So for example, let's say the app is Instagram, the reason I think that social media has evolved to do like the numeric likes and the followers and the endless vertical scrolling and the feedback loops with likes is kind of because those are things that keep you there, right? Yeah, absolutely. And especially Instagram, I mean, I think that app in particular is really interesting because I think it's provided a lot of opportunity for community building like through the rise of like micro influencers or you know how Instagram's now transforming into this platform where a lot of people are age are getting news on Instagram and staying up to date with current events. But despite a lot of the positives that may arise from these kinds of apps, there's, it's this double edged sword. Like even though we're constantly seeing people on our feed and we're feel like we're connecting, we're actually feeling more isolated and lonely, you know, now more than ever. Have you guys had any experiences on apps like Instagram or Snapchat or other social media where you felt that first hand? Like it feels as if you're connecting with other people, but really it's, it perpetuates these feelings of isolation and loneliness. I guess the thing that came to mind for me was like beginning of COVID. So by that, I mean, March through June, in particular before the summer even, where I was just cooked up at home in New York, heard ambulances every five to 10 minutes because New York might as well have been at the center at that point if it wasn't even technically so. And I just spent so much more time than I ever had in my life on social media, just I think probably to try to get that semblance of real life. I think TikTok did a great job at helping people feel a little less alone, but still you're spending hours on a screen. And I just noticed that I wasn't doing anything anymore. I was on Instagram, but nobody had the best parts of their lives to broadcast to the world anymore because there was no best part because everyone was just sitting in their homes. They're just like different things that people were attempting to do to connect. And ironically enough, while people were spending more time on social media, at least in my experience, I felt like people were using social media a little bit more in a way that allowed for connection. Then they are when I guess human connection is readily available. But again, I think that just being isolated for months at a time, at least for me, led to increased usage. And while it was definitely harmful, strangely enough, I think if I spent the same amount of hours on Instagram and TikTok and all that today even, it would probably perpetuate, I think, more of those negative feelings just because it's no longer that more of a collective experience of isolation and loneliness. That's really interesting because regardless of living in this COVID era or not, when hopefully things are slowly starting to return, I guess, a bit more back to normalcy, it's interesting to think about our usage with these kinds of platforms and how it can really perpetuate feelings that negative experiences, like negative emotions. And no matter whether or not you're actually engaging with people in person and you're getting that connection or you're stuck at home during quarantine, we're still seeking that external human connection, regardless if you're in person or not, the negative consequences of social media still exist. So I guess moving forward now coming out of probably, I guess, the worst part of COVID and into now is we're trying to regain a sense of normalcy with the world. What can our generation do to combat these issues with how we engage with social media? And what are some things we can do to really engage with technology more mindfully? Because I think our age group in particular is incredibly hooked to Instagram, to Snapchat, especially to TikTok. I know I definitely am really, really hooked with TikTok. So I'm just wondering, what are some tangible, actionable things we can do to improve our own well-being while still engaging with these kinds of platforms in a more mindful way? - Yeah, I think you really hit on it with the word mindful. Like I know for myself, I haven't stopped to completely take social media out of my life. One thing that I really like about Instagram is I think it's a nice way to see what's going on in some of my more distant friends or acquaintances lives without checking in with them every day. And so for me, it's been saying, okay, well, I can go on for 10 minutes and I can enjoy that and feel like I've read up on everything I need to do, check the stories, check the posts, and then move on with the rest of my life. And so some people put in, you know, what's the word, like time limits, to make sure that they're not on for any longer than that. But something that I've also noticed is, I think a lot of that becomes more second nature. So when I'm living a very busy social life, I feel less of a need to go and check Instagram more periodically. And so I think once people have more practice and especially after COVID, I think there will be a lot more focus on people wanting to see and engage with people in person. And I think that will sort of be a self-feeding mechanism. So in the same way that once I start scrolling on Instagram, it's much easier to be looped back in. I think something that we liked about CrowdSurf is, once people are going out on these activities and are actually spending time with people, it's a lot easier to be, you know, brought back into that. Okay, I want to spend time with people in person. I can still use Instagram mindfully as much as I want, but I'm not sort of turning to it for that more social aspect, if that makes sense. - Yeah, so like when we return, hopefully, to a more normal life, we're going to become busier with things to do. And so that desire to like constantly be on our phones or constantly be online might naturally fade away or at least become less important in our lives. - Yeah, and I think, you know, not just say that it'll totally disappear, but at least for myself, I've grown to really realize that I get so much more joy out of in-person interaction than I do from an app like Instagram or TikTok. And so have a greater appreciation for that. And I think from a lot of the people that have spoken to, including this team and others, that's been a pretty consistent realization over the last year. - Clearly there's this issue around how technology has a lot of negative effects on our own well-being, our own emotional well-being and our ability to create human connection and be invested in social interaction. I'd love to hear more about the origin story of CrowdSurf and what you guys are doing with this app and how it's going to essentially help combat these issues of social isolation and help our generation better engage with technology. Kind of realize that like I mentioned before, this app is not really social and it's actually a little bit damaging. And second, like a lot of Gen Z is already constantly using their phones for up day, communicating virtually and using kind of the same technology tools that could be used to our real life actually social social situations. If angled the right way, we think that using an amalgamation of these ideas, social technology can kind of mirror and resonate with the cadence of real life interaction rather than create a new small bubble of a world that exists only virtually. The idea is kind of to use the tools that we already have to carry forward things that we already do day to day rather than kind of, like you know we've been talking about Instagram TikTok, I think those are actually like brand new spaces that we engage with. So using technology in a way that's actually going to benefit our own well-being and allow for these in-person interactions to actually be more engaging and more meaningful. Because oftentimes, you know when we're out with our friends or doing things like we're still on our phones, we're taking photos before we sit down to eat a meal and we're constantly scrolling on whatever app or looking at whatever notification that pops up. So it seems kind of like the mission of CrowdSurf is to, as you said, like bridge the interactions we have with like the tech world and the real world and hopefully enable people to meet up in a way that allows for a more meaningful experience. Yeah, absolutely. I think that what's striking is that they're really like we were talking about. Yvite might be the closest thing to like using technology for get-togethers in person, which is crazy because we do interact with our phones all the time, especially our generation. Yvite, like the timescale that that operates on, is like one month out, like three months out, where I totally think that if I were to have an easy planning app to get together with a large group of friends, the timescale would be like 24 hours, 48 hours at most, or you know, a couple days at most, which is an interesting space that we wanted to tap into, I think. Can you talk a little bit about how the app is going to work? What users can expect from the experience of being on CrowdSurf and what you hope people are going to gain out of using CrowdSurf? We definitely dialed back since we initially thought of the idea because at first we were just thinking of almost Facebook level with the like number of features that we wanted to include. And we realized that when going through with creating our mox on Figma and when even trying to get a developer for the product that objectively, we need to just test our proof of concepts before even diving into all of the things that we think would be cool to include. As far as our MVP goes, we were to expect users to be able to add people who they one are already friends with or two want to become friends with because we are doing this kind of mutual adding thing where people cannot know if someone added them to their network unless they are the person independently added them back. So there will be no notification of Kyla added you as a friend on CrowdSurf. Instead, you will just start seeing each other's events on the feeds. But we're having the events show up in a way where when people do go through their feeds and they do have their mutual connections on their homepage, the person who posted won't be attached to the event itself. The most that would happen is it says, okay Stella and three of her friends are going to hike tomorrow. I don't know if Stella posted it. I don't know if one of her friends posted it. All that matters is I know someone who's going, which would allow for the opportunity for me to meet new people because I wouldn't be so focused on who the entire group is. I'd be focused at least in part on the activity, which I at least think that would help create new connections instead of seeing the whole group say, and you're like, oh, I don't know that person might get a little nervous, but you still know that you have that comfort zone of your friends. So we were thinking that people should expect to be going on events with short turnaround, maybe 48 to 72 hours between posting in the actual event occurring with either friends or friends or friends. We're still trying to decide if the biggest degree of separation between all people attending should be one or two. I was even just thinking about a time in which I met someone who was two degree of separation from me. And I was like, honestly, that worked out. We could do two degrees, but I guess we want to give people the opportunity to be spontaneous, meet new people, and strengthen connections with people they already know. So I would say those are the three common things. And we are thinking of pretty much just having half the time between the event, posting, and the event happening, be on the feed, and then the second half of that time being in a group chat actually planning the event. So it's a very, I guess, interactive process as well. So let's say like I have a profile on crowd sort of, and I want to do a dinner. I want to go get sushi with friends. And I gather like two of my close friends, but then I post about it on the platform. What are like the next steps? So let's say you, you're, you know, a mutual friend of mine, and we're friends on the platform, and you see that I post this event. What would be like the next step from that? Yeah. So I wouldn't know that you posted it. All I would know is that you're going. You could post the event. Maybe you could get your friends see it on their feed and they see you're going and then they can go. But the idea isn't so already have a set group and get other people to join in. It's more so to build a group from scratch based on the people who you've added and they've added you back. So you know it'll be any combo of those people. You just won't know what that combo is until I guess you're more closely approaching the time you actually need to plan with them. So you just need to expect people to join the event within like if you say 48 hours, then the first 24 people will join. And then you'll know who's coming in the next 24. So then once you have that event created and people are starting to sign up or indicate that they're going to attend, how does the event planning part of the app work? For the MVP in particular, Mira and I actually talked about this a lot within the last week. We were speaking with developers just the lay of the land. We aren't sure yet. We still have to talk to developers to see how technically possible this is. But our current idea is that it would just auto-generate like an i-message group because right now we're focusing on iOS. So our idea was once the 24 hours comes up, literally a message would just get sent to your phone. I get a push notification from us also saying the group chat's being creative. But you would get pretty much a group message with all the people that are going in it. So if you don't know a number, we maybe can prompt people to introduce themselves, prompt them to start planning. But right now we aren't thinking of having a built-in chat feature just because time and money are things that we've been thinking about right now. And it doesn't feel like the main I guess core concept that we're trying to test right now. That makes a lot of sense. And I guess you're still like in these early development stages. So there's a lot of iteration happening and trying to better understand how to make this feasible and how to make it work. Moving forward now I guess from the actual event planning and you go to the event, what happens while you're, let's say, at the sushi dinner. So we're all together and what happens within the app in particular to encourage everyone at the event to be really present with each other and I guess, you know, mindfully engage with their phones at that point. Before the MVP, like Kyla said, we're trying to kind of have a proof of concept, which is the creating the event and getting people opted into the event and attending the event. Down the line, there's this idea that while you're there, the app becomes just kind of like a route or something to capture content. While you're there, we don't want you to be scrolling through events you might attend on Saturday or adding friends or doing all kinds of other things. It's that while you're there, you should be in the moment and the only thing you should be looking at your phone to do is to capture the moment if you'd like to. And the idea here is that all the content that is captured by the attendees would then be kind of put together and put into an archive that would live as kind of a shared folder among the participants. Then it's not like I'm posted on Instagram to 2,000 people, five of whom I was actually with. It's all five people and only the five people who I was with have access to the pictures and the videos and kind of get to relive the good times. So the idea is like to share a memory and share it among the people who you have the experience with. I love that because it also eliminates that desire to then, as you mentioned, like go and post about it on Instagram and share on your own platform, something that you did with a few friends. Not, you know, the entire world doesn't need to know what you're up to all the time. And I feel like we because we're on these platforms, like we feel the need to post constantly or kind of show that we're up to things and we're doing things and we're social beings and we're busy, but I really love how with the app, the purpose is that if you're going to capture, you know, the moment you and the group that you're with have access to the photos or the videos or whatever you're capturing, within your own group. And it's not really to broadcast to the entire world what you're doing, but it allows you to better savor the moment and enjoy it after the fact with the group that you are with. - Absolutely, I think it's the shared memory that makes it really special. And it definitely removes activity also that it's not broadcasted to the whole world. It does not have this kind of celebrity effect, right? It's just kind of me and my close friend we have is great dinner and we can relive it through a video, I guess, forever. - Now that we have a little bit of a better understanding of the app and the product that you guys are trying to build right now, I wanna backtrack a little bit to the Women Ignite Incubator, which is very all met initially and how you were all brought together through this initiative and decided to actually develop the app. So can you guys talk a little bit about what the Women Ignite Incubator is and how you all came together to figure out like this was something you wanted to create together? - Totally, so I think the Women Ignite Incubator was actually very representative and sort of foretelling of what we ended up doing in that what it was was 20 college women from different schools coming to live together in the middle of the Redwoods in Northern California. Many of us not knowing each other and many of us not including myself taking the risk to take time off from school to do that. And so it was this really interesting sort of social experiment in that at a time when many of us had spent months already sort of in relative social isolation and much of the world was still doing that. All of their social interactions were zoom half the hours and things like that. We were meeting 20 new people living together in a really safe but also really new and exciting environment. And the mission was essentially to come together and work on tech startups together. And so one of the first days we had this, what they called an unconference, like UN conference. And the idea was just everyone start talking about what you're excited about, move around, mingle, there's no official presentation but we just wanna get everyone's excitments and passions and all of that. And so the four of us, Kyla Mirasopi and I all had great interest in health and especially in mental health. And as we talked more, the idea of crowdsurf became a little bit more clear but that didn't happen for weeks. So it was more kind of fleshing out, well what is going on with mental health in our generation? What is the power of social interaction, et cetera, et cetera? Soon it became pretty clear that we were all really excited about the same mental needs and how we could go about solving those. We're really excited to kind of get going from there. That's amazing. And I think to have the opportunity to go to something like that, the Women Ignite Incubator, to be out in California and taking time off from school also, that's a big risk to take. But I guess even though COVID has really just been a horrible, horrible thing that's happened over the past year, it's also kind of allowed for opportunities for growth and innovation and creativity and for something like this to emerge out of it, which I think is so incredible and providing something that's actually gonna help our generation and empower our generation, especially as we're going through this mental health crisis amongst young adults, which is incredibly apparent. So I think that must have been such a really fun experience and to get together a group of people who are all aligned on this similar mission and have very similar values, I feel like really allows for you to bring crowdsurf to fruition. - For sure. And yeah, one of the things that the group did, the all-twenty of us that first week were there was watch social dilemma just because it was something that so many people that were there were interested in. And then I think the four of us kind of kept building on it and we're like, well, not only are we interested in this, but we're really interested in this and kept building from there. - Yeah, I do also wanna touch a little bit on Lookup Live. How does that fit into the story of crowdsurf? What made you guys decide to apply to the competition and the innovator showcase, I guess, is what it was? One of the people actually at Women Ignite goes to Dartmouth who partners with Lookup Live and she actually had done something similar with the program a year before and she was thinking about our project and she was like, guys, you'd be perfect for this. And we looked into the website, we saw that they actually had a social dilemma competition. We were like, oh my God, this is literally what we're doing. We have to apply to this. So we spent some time refining our pitch deck answering the responses they had on the application and we applied with fingers crossed. And then it fortunately happened to work out for us, which was really exciting. I think that our project would just happen to be incredibly well aligned with what they were doing. So it kind of almost happened to be out of all the pitch things I've seen, the one best aligned to exactly what we're doing. So it was very exciting to find that first. Now we're going through this six month mentorship program. There's 12 different teams that actually got funding. It was a small seed grant. So that's definitely gonna help us with development, which is exciting. We definitely realized we need to fundraise more, which was a big realization also this last week while we're kind of doing our work, I guess you could say. But it's been helpful. We have a mentor who works at BlackRock. We said that we particularly need to help with development engineering. So she's been putting us in contact with people. We have like monthly meetings, different mentors. They let us talk to. - Yeah, no, that's incredible. And look up live is a nonprofit that really empowers our generation to create solutions to problems that are related to combating mental health issues. And especially what you're doing with crowds who really does align with this whole concept around social isolation and everything that's discussed in the social dilemma, which is such a good documentary. After I watched it, it became even more apparent to me like how our phones are created to get us hooked and keep us addicted to staying on them. And so it was kind of like, oh God, I watched it. And I was like, I really need to rethink how I choose to use my phone and my computer and all other devices. Moving into the next few years, I know you guys are really busy with securing more funding and really getting this off the ground. But how do you hope to see crowdsurf grow over the next few years? - Yeah, so we're hoping to launch a pilot program in the fall at Stanford. And then launching and marketing, right? As we get back, hopefully get back to campus post pandemic. And when people I think are gonna be really, you know, vying even more than they were before for those new social connections and social interactions. And from there, we hope to expand to different campuses, definitely using the women ignite connections to tap into Harvard or Georgetown, whatever it may be, and then kind of taking it from there. But those are our initial steps for the future. That's really exciting. Where can my followers follow along? The journey of crowdsurf? Is there like a website or a specific social media handle? - Yeah, absolutely. So we actually are just getting started on our marketing push. So we will hopefully have an Instagram in the next few weeks. And we will give that handle to you post all over our Instagrams, all over the internet. You will definitely see it. So as soon as we have our MVP going and begin to make that marketing push, your followers are more than welcome to engage in all the platforms. So you'll be seeing that very soon. - That's really exciting. I wish you all the best of luck. It takes so much courage and determination to do something like this. So I am incredibly impressed by what you guys are doing. And I am really excited to see where it goes and then, you know, in the short term and the long term. One question that I do have for all of you that I ask all of my guests that come onto every day in Dorfins is what is something that brings you a bit of endorphins every day? - For me, I grew up in New York City. So I have always been a very big walker. And I noticed that during the pandemic, I was not walking as much as I hoped to. And even when I did go on walks, I just wasn't seeing people. So now that I guess we're slowly approaching a little bit more normal CS time goes on, I really get endorphins from putting my headphones and going on a walk for two hours. Like even if I'm not directly talking to people or even with a mask on, I'm not even directly seeing their faces. I noticed that I get a lot of joy in just seeing other people and like reminding myself that the world's bigger than myself. And just even like interacting with strangers. Like yesterday I was on the walk and this lady came out to me and was like, I love your bag, like how'd you get it? I know this is hard to get. We've set a conversation for like 30 seconds. But I guess just integrating myself in little ways back into the world has been making me very happy recently. So I'd say those have been my recent endorphins, Richard. - Unsurprisingly, mine is also probably doing most things just with people. But one thing I really like doing with people is cooking. It's really fun to kind of produce something and craft something. I'm not very artistic, but for me it's, you know, the opportunity to like be creative and then also kind of be able to enjoy the final product with everyone. And now that I say that out loud, I realize that's sort of what's happening with crowdsurf. It was, you know, part of the fun was the idea, but a lot of it was brainstorming with this group and then building it with this group. So yeah, that would be what brings me everyday endorphins. - Yeah, so I'd say what brings me everyday endorphins is kind of similar with DeKyla during the day. pandemic kind of been a hold up in small spaces. I actually more recently just got injured. So I'm very, very excited to start exercising and getting my energy out again. The other day I went in a long walk and I just kind of had the urge to run. And I was like, well, I'm wearing a dress. I've got quite dress for a jog. But I kind of made a mental note. Okay. I'm going to, you know, get back to the gym post pandemic, kind of in that regular workout routine because I realized that it really, really does just bring me joy. And in some ways, feels a little bit like meditation, which is kind of crazy. Like headphones in, just working out kind of to myself. I don't think I'd like mentally registered how much I value that until I can injuries and various other things that can kind of take it away momentarily. So definitely that. Yeah, I totally feel you with that idea of like working out being some sort of meditation and something that I recently learned that I think is so interesting is that yoga was meant to be like the physical postures was meant to be practiced before you actually sit down to do your meditations that you get all your energy out. And it like actually prepares you to then sit down and like do a meditation practice, which I never, I never knew until recently. So I thought that was kind of interesting because there's definitely a lot of ties between like physical activity and also meditation. But I really love all of your answers. There's so many things that I found that bring people in doorphins and just day to day happiness. And I think it's important to focus on those little things, especially right now. And there's not a ton to look forward to everything kind of feels monotonous and mundane. But I'm so excited to see crowds are of grow and it's going to be a flourishing venture that you guys are doing. So thank you again for coming on to the podcast. It was so wonderful to have you all as guests. Thank you so much for having us. Yeah, thanks. Dallas was awesome. Thank you so much. This was a great, great conversation. Thank you. Thank you for listening. If you liked what you heard, please follow rate review every day and orphans on whichever listing platform that you use to stream my episodes. Thanks again and I'll see you next time.