LOS ANGELES, March 15, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) – Lolly is the brainchild of Marc Baghadjian of Babson College senior and NYU graduate Sacha Schermerhorn. Lolly was getting rid of their fears with the photos, swiping, and height thresholds that defined every date app. Realizing that people were turning to social apps as a more fun way so far, Marc and Sacha decided to go on a trip to build their own date app that included the media. -this growth in consumer behavior.
“I was just annoyed by how one-sided the date view was. In fact, the world has changed but the platforms are not there to support us. COVID has only made that clearer to me and the Gen-Z community, ”says Baghadjian.
Lolly’s product vision aims to create a fun food of engaging in short social videos that bring to life the once static images of complex people. Video allows people to tell their stories by being funny, interesting, engaging and more. Our clap activity allows users to appreciate content without the promise of matching, allowing for fun social dating. Features like this bring the fun in social applications to the retrospective view and allow us to pioneer a new category we call, Social dating.
Product Manager Alyssa Goldberg says this sets Lolly apart from other date apps. “We bring organic sports back to back. You would never in real life judge someone from a distance and immediately say yes or no. People want to talk, engage, laugh, flirt and discover common interests Lolly allows users to showcase their personality through video content, find people based on common interests, and flirt easily using Living at a crossroads and going backwards gives us that perfect sweet place of fun and self-explanation to create more interesting connections, not just a platform for virality. ”
New users go through an on-board process first, in which they first see sample videos of content created by existing users. This is an example to encourage new users to express themselves and showcase their own personality through their own content. After making an account, users can interact with each other through Claps, Crushes, and Messages for their matches. The unique thing about Lolly’s Clap and Crush process is that these tokens are kept private – only the user who has received “Clapped” or “Crushed” knows them.
“Sharing content and commenting on each other’s posts, getting to know each other through profiles and photos, posting videos… this is how relationships are already formed online. Conventional apps don’t have the bandwidth to take the connection types that properly represent the ones currently happening among Gen-Z, ”Baghadjian says.
In fact, it was through online interactions that Mark met his co-founder and President Lolly, Sacha Schermerhorn. Schermerhorn met through Baghadjian through a friend to each other who was in the same famous Pioneer acceleration group as Schermerhorn, who has a background in neuro-science.
“We met through someone in my befriending program where I help children get funding. My mentee won the Pioneer accelerator and Sacha won the Pioneer as well. He was the one who first connected with us, “Baghadjian said.
“He had made sure Mark and I had a lot to talk about, and on our first phone call, we ended up talking for hours. It was chemistry. immediately, “Schermerhorn reveals.
That first call was made on June 3, 2020. Since then, the two have moved in together, assembled an amazing team, and taken Lolly from just a bold idea to the start of a full campaign. Their efforts and progress went unnoticed.
Lolly has drawn the attention of John Sculley (former Apple CEO), SV Angel Ron Conway, John Pleasants (former IAC President) [Match Group parent company] Ticketmaster), Blair Shane (former CMO of Sequoia Capital), Jane Metcalfe (co-founder of WIRED), Scott Eagle (former CMO of E-Harmony), Mitch Lowe (Founding CEO at Netflix), among others. Continuing the focus on the Gen Z experience, Lolly is currently working with the investor California Crescent Fund, a student-run venture fund in Southern California, to help build and grow a community.
In particular, Baghadjian and Schermerhorn have achieved this despite the challenges of stay-at-home orders and locksmiths. COVID-19 has fundamentally changed the way humans interact, as evidenced by the meteoric rise of Zoom and TikTok, enabling remote individuals to be creative, self-explanatory, and more important: interaction. Baghadjian and Schermerhorn believe that Lolly ‘s Gen-Z DNA has been a key advantage that sets them apart from others.
Schermerhorn says, “We, as humans, are more multicolored than static images. Could you sum up the person who means the most to you in 3 pictures and bio 1 sentence? The fact is that the people-led people have been removed from Gen-Z who just can’t empathize with the demographic.That’s where we see the huge potential of the market with a date (pun pun), it ‘s time to bring fresh air into the industry and give Gen – Z what they’ve been waiting for. “
Baghadjian agrees. “COVID-19 and our quarantine experiences in 2020 have only confirmed our mission with Lolly. We want to focus on connections that are aimed at empowering, integrating and Swiping culture is prohibitive, it ‘s dehumanizing, it’s a thing of the past.We want to be a target of multifaceted attractiveness and, indeed for the first time in this industry , bring personality into the equation. “
Lolly is a social app that uses short format video content to let you tell your story. Our product scene closest to TikTok meets Tinder and lets people stand out in an audio world by being more engaging, funny, interesting in videos than static photos.
Contact the media:
Zach Conley
[email protected]