With its long waiting lines and unbelievably high cover charges, Vancouver nightlife has gained a notoriously bad rep, but Yero is here to change the game. Focusing more closely on the social element embedded in nightlife, the app enables people to join social networks in specific clubs, colleges or festivals and to connect with people in events occurring around them.
The Vancouver-based app was developed and co-founded by two SFU graduates and one UBC graduate and has already established extensive networks across Vancouver, including college networks at SFU and UBC and over 20 club and large venue networks.
Matthew Greig, an SFU Economics graduate, is the CEO & co-founder of Yero.
“I originally conceived the idea for Yero in early 2014," said Greig. "I always felt that there was an opportunity there, so I spent some time planning the app, finding the right people to get this started and about 3-4 months ago I found Lance online, and reached to him for coffee and started chatting. From there, he joined the team and we were able to take the app to the next level."
Unlike other nightlife apps springing up around North American cities, which often chiefly provide utility functions and services for potential club-goers, Yero focuses on the social aspect of nightlife and on linking people to private networks based on their geographical context.
“At its core, I believe that nightlife is social. If you remove all the venues and all the music and the DJs, you just have the people. Without them, there is nothing happening so I always wondered why there are no social networks designed for this purpose. We are kind of going down that road with Yero. We are a social app first, and a nightlife app second” said Greig.
With the social element at the forefront of its production, Yero’s applicability extends from nightlife to encompass various other social events held during daylight, including on-campus events and city festivals.
“If you are on campus at UBC, for example, you can post about what's occurring today and the app will show the people sorted by activity in a list format. Once you choose to join a network, you can reach out to people around you and message them. If they decide to reply within 12 hours, Yero unlocks a conversation feature and if the person that you message wants to connect and become your friend, then you can go to Snapchat, Line, WeChat” said Greig.
Building on its multiple features at present, the team at Yero is working to expand the features available to users and to support festivals in major North American cities by 2016.
“Eventually, we want to become this social app that you can go to for when you think of tonight or just in the moment. We also plan to be able to sell users' tickets to get to a venue and to show them events that are happening and create avenues in there as well. We will be supporting festivals around North America, such as Electric Daisy Carnival in Las Vegas. The plan is definitely to get out of Vancouver and expand, and the next in the list is most likely Toronto and then Las Vegas” said Greig.
Yero can be downloaded for free from the iOS App Store. While an Android version is not currently available, the team is planning to support Android in the near future.