Contributed by Oliver Walsh
An app startup created by NC State students seeks to help people decide what to do with their nights out. The app, called ShareFish, launched on March 28 and has about 900 users.
ShareFish informs users about bars and restaurants. However, it tells less about the venue and more about the people there.
“For each bar, we can display the gender ratio, the age range and the percentage of people that are single,” said John Malatras, one of the company’s co-founders.
Malatras is a sophomore studying computer and electrical engineering.
“If you’re a guy and you want to go to a place with a lot of single girls, you can do that,” Malatras said. “Or if you’re in a new city, you don’t know where to go, you’re on a budget, you can go to the cheapest place and see where the people you want to spend time with are.”
ShareFish also displays specials for restaurants, as well as how far away they are. The app is also linked with Uber to provide easier transportation.
“Whenever you’re drunk and you’re like ‘I don’t really want to type the address in’ or ‘I don’t want to go onto Google and figure it out,’ don’t worry, we’ve taken care of it for you,” said Oliver Walsh, the company’s CEO. Walsh is a junior studying electrical engineering.
In addition, there will soon be a feature called “emoji classification.” Users will select what emojis best describe them, and the most popular emojis for a given venue at any time will be displayed in the app. The emojis will include the standard Apple library, as well as custom emojis for colleges and sports teams.
Walsh says this feature will help users find people with similar interests.
“If a lot of Steelers fans are in a venue at the same time, one of those emojis above that venue is going to be a Steelers emoji,” Walsh said.
ShareFish collects its user information using a device called an iBeacon. The iBeacons are placed in bars and can detect whenever a phone enters the venue. If the phone has ShareFish installed, then the user’s gender, age and relationship status are added to the bar’s averages.
However, Walsh assures, the iBeacon technology is completely anonymous. The iBeacons do not collect names, and the company cannot track where users go.
“Ultimately, what we want ShareFish to become is the directory that you go to when you’re trying to figure out where to go,” Walsh said. “You go to a new city, you want to be in your scene, you want to know where your drink is, but you have no idea where to go.”
The information that ShareFish collects will also benefit the participating venues, according to Malatras. ShareFish organizes and sells analytics back to the bars that have the iBeacons.
“On our web app, bars can see when their most popular times were, when certain age demographics are coming in, younger people versus older people, males versus females, single versus in a relationship,” Malatras said.
Looking ahead, ShareFish plans to expand into Chapel Hill, Charlotte and Athens, Georgia. Then, the company wants to spread even further.
“Our goal is to be in 25–30 cities by first week of school fall semester,” Malatras said. “We want to be at every big school in the Southeast.”
While the app is only available on iPhone, the company plans to make a version available for Android users.
In September, Walsh won $1,000 for the company at a minute-pitch competition called Entrepolooza. Development for the app began in January.