New app ‘Wyzr Friends’ helps older adults make friends, arrange carpools

Whether you’re an empty nester, divorcé or a newcomer looking to make friends in a new city, Wyzr Friends wants to be the go-to activity-based friendship app for adults 40 years old and up to connect with like-minded individuals, attend social events, arrange carpools and try new things.

The app works similarly to Bumble Friends, as you thumbs up or thumbs down people and message matches to get to know each other and arrange an in-person activity that both of you enjoy. For instance, you both may like watching movies, wine tasting, shopping, playing golf, cooking or hiking. There’s also an option to make a joint account with your significant other, which can be handy for setting up double dates.

In addition to shared interests, you can select from health and wellness goals to showcase on your Wyzr Friends profile, matching with people based on what you want to improve. Some examples include mindfulness, spirituality, finances and career goals.

Many older adults find it harder to make friends, with approximately 35% of adults in the U.S. aged 45 years old and older admitting to feeling lonely. However, not many friendship platforms cater to this specific age group. The ones that do exist – Stitch, Amintro, Silversurfers and Senior Chatz – are mainly online forums, chat rooms or group experiences, making it difficult to form a one-on-one connection.

“A lot of these friendship apps are geared towards much younger people,” co-founder Taylor J told TechCrunch. “There’s nothing out there that’s geared towards people over 40 made by people over 40.”

 

Additionally, Wyzr Friends has two proprietary features that help it stand out: “Friend Blast” and “Carpool.”

Friend Blast allows you to send out invitations to certain matches so you can easily schedule plans with someone with one tap. Plus, the app plans to launch a group chat feature within the next few weeks, letting you coordinate events with multiple people simultaneously. A video chat capability is also on the long-term roadmap.

Meanwhile, Carpool is a feature that could help many members, especially if you no longer drive and are looking to share a ride with someone going to the same concert as you, a shopping mall, a nail salon, and so on. You just enter the date, time, and destination, then coordinate a pick-up spot.

Friend Blast and Carpool are premium features, but Wyzr Friends is making them free until December 31 in hopes of engaging more users. Another way the startup intends to make money is through sponsors and branded content.

“We want to keep this app free,” J emphasized. “We are not intending to charge a monthly membership. We may at some point introduce in-app purchases for premium features, but at this time, what we’d love to do is to keep the app subscription-free for as long as possible and use the videos as a way to make branded content and have strategic partnerships right on that on that page.”

Wyzr Friends is in discussions with a major tech company for its first strategic partnership, J told us.

Instead of revealing your exact age, Wyzr Friends connects people based on age range—less than 50 years old, 50-64 years old, 65-74 years old as well as 75 and older. The app also has ID verification to ensure a user’s profile matches their government ID. Scammers often target older adults, so this is an important feature to have.

“We’re big believers in ID verification and safety, especially for this age range,” co-founder Taylor J said during an interview. She added that Wyzr Friends is considering adding age verification as well.

The verification is done through its Persona integration, an identity startup that recently partnered with Walmart’s delivery app Spark to help reduce identity fraud among drivers.

Lastly, we would be remiss if we didn’t mention the iconic song that plays whenever you open the app: Thank You for Being a Friend by Andrew Gold. It’s definitely a heartwarming addition that “Golden Girls” fans will love.

Wyzr Friends launched its public beta on October 11 and already has 400 users and 1,400 installs. It’s available on iOS and Android devices in the U.S., Canada, Australia, Ireland, Philippines, Singapore and Mexico.

The app officially launches at the beginning of next year.