Markeshia Ricks Photo
Smith & Mullan at Spangle HQ.
You want to grab your broomstick for an impromptu game of Muggle quidditch this weekend, but don’t know anyone in New Haven who likes the sport as much as you. And you don’t feel like inviting people from 2,000 miles away.
Or maybe you’re a new restaurateur in the city and you want to let everyone know about your special happy hour. Starting now, you can take out your iPhone and tap the picture of a cheeky kitty rocking flight gear and open a new app called Shout!
At least that’s what Charlie Mullan (at right in top photo), founder and CEO of Spangle Inc., would like to see you do.
His company created the Shout! app, which launches Thursday for iPhones, as a trimmed down spinoff of the first app created by his company, which has its headquarters at Baobab Tree Studios (formerly of the Grove) on Orange Street.
Mullan, a recent graduate of Trinity College in Hartford, started the company in his dorm during his sophomore year after realizing he “had very little information about everything that was happening around me whether that be activities, parties, events, or even just someone to play basketball with.”
While working a prestigious internship with UBS, the Buffalo, N.Y. native discovered banking wasn’t his passion. He used his summer internship to pitch his business idea to his fellow interns and company executives. He managed to convince two executives — Jake Elmhirst, global head of the Private Funds Group UBS Investment Bank and former UBS CEO Robert Wolf — to not only provide him seed money, but to act as mentors. He spent his junior year at Trinity organizing a tech savvy team, and just before his graduation managed to raise about $2 million from 13 “angel” investors including original investor Wolf. The company launched its first app, Spangle, in September 2014.
The decision to create a social networking tool that hinges on location grew out of lessons that Spangle’s 10 staffers learned from the creation of their first app, the 24-year-old Mullan said.
“People struggle to find out about the things that are going on around them and to stay connected,”said Mullan. “The app attempts to solve a valid problem” of connecting people to what’s happening around them and connecting with people around those happenings.
You might ask how people can still struggle to connect when so many are sharing selfies on Instagram, Tweeting their every move and posting what they had for breakfast on Facebook.
Mullan said social media networks like Facebook allow you to connect with people you know who are scattered all over the world. Twitter connects you to people you might not even know. Both require you to share content in specific ways with people you might not actually want to share with because it’s not relevant to them.
He said that’s great for people who don’t mind sharing their content with any and everyone, but not so much for people who want to be more selective.
That’s where the Shout! app comes in.
The goal of the app is for people to “shout” statuses and pictures that are relevant to other people nearby, say, 25 feet or 25 miles away. Those people can engage by replying and liking the content, and also by simply showing up to places like the Green for a Muggle quidditch game, or at a happy hour at a local watering hole.
Ashley Smith, Spangle’s community manager (pictured), said that the Shout! app can be used for promoting local events. “The community-building aspect of this could have a huge benefit, because it allows people to integrate themselves more into New Haven,” she said.
While connecting locally is the goal, Smith said, you can shout wherever you are in the world. That means if you’re from New Haven, but happen to take a day trip to New York City and want to let your fellow app users know you’re in town, all you have to do is shout.
The Shout! app is free for download for iPhone users only at this time. Mullan said an Android version could be on the way depending on how popular the app is among early adopters and investors. But that doesn’t mean that Spangle Inc. is only interested in iPhone devotees. Next month, the company plans to launch an app called Kitchat that will take aim at solving the problem of annoying group text messages. Android users will get first crack at that app.
