New social app helps small business

Go is a new social app helping to empower New Zealand’s small businesses, particularly those that were hit the hardest across Auckland’s multiple lockdowns.

With New Zealand better placed than anywhere else in the world for face-to-face interaction – the founders of Go, a new social app, opted for Auckland as the city to begin its global roll-out.

The app set its sights on empowering small businesses, particularly those that have been hit the hardest across Auckland’s multiple Covid-19 lockdowns, such as bars, salons, event promoters, wineries, fitness studios, markets, restaurants and more. As at the beginning of April, 500-plus Auckland business have partnered with the app, putting them in front of the 31,000 users who have signed up since last month’s launch and increasing by roughly 400 users each day. 

The Go team continues to celebrate the success that small Auckland businesses have had from the app as they promote their events and venues across the city.

The team at Craft Beer Tours Matakana are just one of more than 500 businesses that signed up to the app who have branded the launch “an innovative move for Auckland businesses,” says Bryce Read, owner of Craft Beer Tours. “It’s connecting businesses and people to actually encourage participation and not focused on likes and followers.”

Since its New Zealand launch in February, small businesses have been thrilled to see how Go encourages its users to support the community by getting Kiwis to actively go out and hunt out new venues and activities in their city.

Bryce says, “we were looking to partner with a platform that focuses on getting people back out into the world doing things. After a very turbulent year for business, Aucklanders are in the fortunate position of being able to revel in the simple pleasure of meeting with a friend in person and Go provides the platform for them to do so.”

With Go users being able to select their interests, and have relevant events served to them, Bryce and his team feel reassured knowing that Kiwis are actively looking to take part in their tours, “having the business on Go means we can actively seek out people that are specifically interested in craft beer. It’s a tool that we’ve never had access to before and so it’s been really interesting to see how much of an engaged audience and following we have. We’ve been pleasantly surprised!” 

America’s loss, NZ’s gain

Go founders, Sean Conrad (an engineer) and Jesse Berns (an epidemiologist and data scientist), spent a year building the app with the intention of launching in America, however, as the pandemic raged on in the U.S. and face-to-face interaction continued to be increasingly hard to encourage, the pair made the decision to switch their launch to New Zealand.

“From an epidemiological point of view, Auckland was an obvious choice and we’re really excited to launch here first. New Zealand has really effectively handled the pandemic and because of that, people enjoy the level of social freedom that we needed to launch Go,” says Jesse. “We also found that New Zealanders have a positive sentiment towards social media, as well as high social media usage.”

Go is unique in the way it builds a loyal customer base by promoting events or offers directly to people that businesses know are interested. It makes it easy for Auckland businesses to find and connect with these people in the exact moment that they’re planning their days and nights with friends with relevant, timely offers.

The app encourages its Kiwi users to make face-to-face plans with friends by means of the app’s “availability” features and up-to-date directory of all the happenings in Auckland. Users are actively using the app to discover new venues, activities and events in their own city, as put forward by users and local businesses.

The app is leveraging its successful launch in New Zealand and now setting its sights on launching in Australia – with similar expectations of rapid development for small businesses. “The app has a completely unique approach and means there’s a genuine two-way benefit – we’ve had a really positive response to that from Auckland businesses, and we’re proud to be supporting small business,” says Jesse.

Pictured below:   Bryce Read – owner of Craft Beer Tours Matakana.