Back in early March, I shared a story on San Francisco-based startup Groundfloor. Co-founder and chief executive officer Jamie Snedden explained to me in an interview the company, who offers physical spaces for like-minded people to meet, mingle, and strike up friendship, has its origins in 2021 when his wife confronted him about not leaving the house for several days at one point. Groundfloor came to be when Snedden realized he missed person-to-person interaction, something the pandemic obviously took away during its apex (or nadir, if you prefer).
Snedden wanted to rectify things for himself—and for others.
Groundfloor has a video on YouTube detailing its mission.
Snedden and I reunited recently—perhaps ironically over videoconference—to discuss what he and co-founders Jermaine Ijieh and Leutrim Rexhepi have been up to for the last six months or so. The biggest piece of news, Snedden told me, was Groundfloor’s expansion. Along with its home in San Francisco’s Mission district, the company now has outposts in Oakland with new ones coming soon in San Rafael and Los Angeles. In our initial conversation, Snedden said expanding was a big deal because the company wants to reach more people in helping them push back against social isolation and grow their personal network. “It’s been a really busy time on all fronts [as] things have grown and developed,” Snedden said of Groundfloor’s recent growth spurt.
Of course, expansion generally is commensurate with demand. According to Snedden, the company has been “overwhelmed” by customer demand. The San Francisco location currently has about 500 members, with Groundfloor maintaining a waitlist for interested parties. In fact, the demand was one of the reasons for opening the Oakland location; Snedden said a “significant portion” of the company’s San Francisco contingent, around 20%, lives in East Bay cities like Berkeley, Oakland, and Walnut Creek. Groundfloor has built these new locations to be closely tied to the communities in which they exist. The place in Oakland isn’t a carbon copy of San Francisco. Snedden said it was intentional to give the physical spaces their own identity. “We really wanted to take what was working in [San Francisco] and give those folks [elsewhere] something which was not just a replica, but something that felt local to the community programmed very differently,” he said.
The Bay Area has created a large local network effect, according to Snedden. 80% of Groundfloor’s membership in Oakland are referrals from those in San Francisco. In Los Angeles, opening in December, has 2,000 people on the waitlist, a number which has far exceeded Groundfloor’s expectations. “We’re to the point where we’re having to release our spots in batches and onto certain dates to kind of temper how we open [in LA],” Snedden said of Groundfloor’s ever-burgeoning popularity. “A lot of that is word-of-mouth and organic acquisition, which is good. We’ve seen folks be very excited far and wide, and we’ve been just trying to keep up with demand. It’s a great problem to have.”
As I wrote in my initial coverage, Groundfloor’s product is an interesting one from a disability standpoint. A global pandemic notwithstanding, the reality is many in the disability community have experienced social isolation for a long time, for a variety of reasons. It’s also true making friends can be difficult in large part due to being socially isolated. What makes Snedden and company’s offering so appealing is it’s plausible that a disabled person can be matched with others with shared interests and have a central location at which to meet them. Assuming the actual physical spaces are accessible, Groundfloor can help alleviate much of the cognitive load associated with finding friends and meeting new people. There is obviously legwork to be done after a match, but the salient point is simply that Groundfloor can be a source of socialization and facilitate the cultivation of relationships. For many in the disability community, having such an outlet isn’t trivial. It can be a lifeline.
Even as Groundfloor has grown by leaps and bounds, Snedden said the team has remained humble and steadfastly committed to the company’s North Star. Snedden and his co-founders are still meeting with every applicant to Groundfloor, as well as constantly investing in feedback from users and the design of the physical spaces. “We feel very close to our membership base [and] to our communities, wherever they may be,” he said. “I want that to continue as long as possible. Things just get harder in many ways; as the business grows, there’s added layers of complexity, but we focus a lot on product. Our approach here is we try and build on the product side when the need arises and before that.”
Snedden continued: “Our approach is basically [taking things] one day at a time, one step at a time. If we were to look back, as my wife tells me to do occasionally, we’re building something that has a incredible impact on people’s lives, and we get a lot of gratitude and thanks from our community or members for many things. The friendships that have been formed, passions that have been able to develop them under our umbrella, all of these different things. It’s gratifying, but it’s hard work.”
A lot of structural changes have happened at Groundfloor. Snedden told me about an update to the myriad clubs people can join, where users can now volunteer to run said clubs. Leaders are able to purchase activity-related items with a budget allocated by leadership, as well as schedule events and other functions. On the product side of the business, Groundfloor is now pairing new members by anchoring them to certain events. Snedden described this new feature as an “incredibly successful” way to connect individuals who are attending the same function.
“What we found is that just connecting people—and you can see this in the dating world as well—just the connection is not the valuable part. You have to help folks to make something of that,” Snedden said of matching people. “What we found is that if people are already going to the same physical place at Groundfloor at a time that has been preset—say they’re going to trivia night at 7pm on Thursday—then they’re going to show up. They’re going to meet not because they’ve had to go out of their way and text each other and figure out where they’re going to find each other, but because they’re already going to the same place. We made it that bit easier to find relevant people when you get there.”
Snedden called this new functionality “continual iteration on learning” after talking to users over time and listening to their feedback. On feedback, Snedden told me the Groundfloor team has tried to make it as easy as possible to leave feedback, whether through the app or other means. People, he added, leave comments on everything from bigger feature ideas to more mundane stuff like the restrooms are out of paper towels. “I think the thread of feedback that we’ve received over the past year, certainly the bit in the past six months, is that people have had been able to not only experience things that they that are very hard to experience on their own,” Snedden said of the insights from feedback.
“It sounds like a simple concept, but if you think about working from home, then maybe going into a place like a restaurant or a bar with existing friends. Oftentimes, you’re experiencing something that you’ve experienced before, maybe with a slightly different twist. Or it’s a new place or a new restaurant,” he said of new things. “What we found is, as we’ve learned more about these clubs and these more niche communities, people have tried things [with Groundfloor] they’ve never done before.”
As to the future, Snedden’s vision for Groundfloor is crystal clear.
“What we are here doing in the world is trying to make it easier for adults to find friendship,” he said. “The product we’re building is the toolkit, as we see it, that makes [connection] easier. It just so happens that our our philosophy and our solution is this unique combination of community, digital products, physical spaces, and all of that coming together in this way. It creates a really differentiated offering.”
Snedden added: “If we strip it all back, as long as we are providing space at a neighborhood level, that enables community and friendship, then we’re gonna keep on getting up every day and working as hard as we can to further that vision.”
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