Jamie Lee, Founder of Flox, Is Using Tech to Bring Friend Groups Together

By Tamar Vidra

New York City and college campuses share a similar paradox: despite the sheer number of vibrant, creative, and kind individuals that inhabit both, feelings of loneliness, isolation, and disconnection dominate. Jamie Lee, founder of Flox and formerly CC ’21, is on a mission to disrupt the loneliness epidemic and technologize the friendship-finding process. Her brainchild, Flox, is an app that allows friends to create a group profile together to discover, match, and connect with other groups.

For Jamie, Covid-19 proved pivotal in turning the idea brewing in her head into a fully-fleshed company launching this spring. During the pandemic, she thought seriously about the heightened feeling of isolation, the nature of relationships, and the performance of tech in fostering better ones.

Despite the prevalence of social media platforms, Jamie identified a massive white space in the industry. Existing platforms primarily serve to form romantic connections, but none focused on the “people who could meet without the pressures and expectations of dating,” Jamie pointed out.

This insight was followed by another: Jamie realized that she had always attempted to include her friends in her social media experience, often asking for their opinions on her posts. She explains that this instinct was a knee-jerk reaction to the inauthentic and destructive environments fostered by existing social media platforms: “I was roping my friends into my online experience to ease my social anxiety on these apps from the start. Over time, I found that Instagram and dating apps had become personally toxic.”

Building off of these ideas, Jamie began to imagine a world in which meeting new people online could be both comfortable and fun. This ultimately led to the chief innovation of Flox, a divergence from the siloed and hyper-individual nature of online platforms.

As Jamie summarizes, “I realized that I am my most authentic version of myself around my friends… and that’s how the idea of friends connecting in groups online was born.” After many user interviews, this concept was validated by feedback that “the group model really lends itself to replicating more natural social settings,” Jamie outlined.

Flox’s focus on friend groups, rather than individual profiles, diverges from the traditional dating app model. Additionally, Flox does not serve as as a spin on dating apps, but rather as an elevated group chatting platform that reinvents how users meet and connect. Jamie envisions Flox to be a tool we use to access potential relationships with all of the people who we could be friends with, but currently have no way of meeting.

The idea of authenticity is at the forefront of Flox’s mission. Flox not only strives to provide a better alternative for building friendships online, but also to negate the negative side of social media. Jamie is thinking critically about how to foster “The Flock”: a warm, welcoming, and growing community.

To do so, she endeavors to learn from incumbents’ mistakes.

“I think we have experienced the negative effects of scale as today’s social networks have grown over the past decade. We become so obsessed with superficial signals of validation such as swipes, likes, and comments that we’re not connecting in the way that these platforms originally intended,” Jamie reflects.

There seems to be an implicit draw to what Jamie and her team at Flox are creating, especially among the Gen Z community. Prime evidence of this is Flox’s TikTok account, where one of Jamie’s videos hit over 1 million views and drew in over 20k waitlist sign-ups. At Flox, this indicates an early sign of product-market fit and empowers the team to continue their effort to restore authentic online connections.

“It’s impactful to see people emotionally resonating with the product. As a generation, we’ve grown so tired of the current social platforms. It’s time for a change, and I hope to make an impact,” Jamie stated.

The product-founder fit at Flox is likewise a match made in heaven. Right now, Flox is in private beta and Jamie has her attention focused on developing product as well as Flox’s mission. For Jamie, Flox is not just a company, but an effort to solve a problem that has impacted her deeply:

“I knew instantly that I had to solve this problem and became obsessed with it. Building something for my friends and feeling so personally connected to this mission was critical in my decision to take the leap and pursue Flox full-time. I’m so excited to share Flox with the Columbia community soon.”

We cannot wait to see what Jamie will accomplish this Spring with Flox’s launch and beyond. Check out her full interview below…

This interview has been edited at length for the purpose of brevity. For the full interview, reach out to wave.columbia@gmail.com

Interviewer: Where did the idea behind the company come from?

Jamie Lee: This might be interesting because my Columbia experience was very important in why I went on to build Flox. I just remember getting to school freshman year and feeling like I couldn’t even say hi to the person next to me in class and the people in the suites around me. I came to realize how social media has really affected our generation and made us literally unable to talk to each other in real life. And I was really lucky because I was on the swim team and the rowing team my first two years at school. So I had those automatic communities, but realized I didn’t really know anyone outside of them. So I left athletics, but then nothing really got better in terms of meeting people.

What I didn’t really understand and what I became frustrated with was how inauthentic the methods in place are to meet new people and interact with the people we do know. So, I really just wanted to build a platform where we could really bring back this authentic connection to social media and to our lives.

I thought of the concept for Flox in Covid and what I realized was that we have so much time to make up for, and so many people out there that we should and could be really good friends with, or have some sort of relationship with. And I really want Flox to be this tool for us to tap into that potential and those relationships. I think there’s a lot of people out there who we could meet and it doesn’t have to be in a dating sense.

Generally with Flox, I realized that I’m my most authentic version of myself around my friends. I remember that I was just like sending screenshots and like always asking for my friend’s opinions on things. I was roping my friends into my online experience to ease my social anxiety on these apps from the start. Over time, I found that Instagram and dating apps had become personally toxic. So I was like, this would just be so much more fun and comfortable with people that I know well…that’s kind of how like the group idea was born.

Interviewer: I definitely resonate with your Columbia experience. Do you think your experiences within New York City and those insights really led to like developing the idea behind Flox?

Jamie Lee: A hundred percent! I think New York on one hand is kind of viewed as this really social city, but on the other hand, it is a pretty cold place. And I think the beauty of New York to me is that things are just really straight up and raw at the same. I think we can all agree that New Yorkers do want to meet more people. And we do want to be more friendly to those around us, but we just don’t know how like you were just saying.

I want to make Flox this tool for social media: to really connect us and provide that bridge that doesn’t exist right now. What’s really inspired me about New York is that there’s so many people have so many different backgrounds and I think New Yorkers are just genuinely curious about others. New York just has this energy that has really inspired me and the brand a lot. I’m really lucky to have grown up as a new Yorker and go to school here and to be launching in New York soon.

Interviewer: Awesome. So take me through like how the app actually works.

Jamie Lee: Every user will have to like put in some basic information about just themselves and then you make a Flock with their friends. You can be in multiple Flock for your different social circles of friends.

So let’s say you create your first Flock and it could with your roommates. You come up with a name, you can answer different prompts together, add pictures and, basically design this whole group identity. And then from there, you can go and discover other Flocks in your feed. After that you can match with the different Flock and a group chat is created. What happens there is we really want to give users control over the situation.

Obviously we’re in COVID and I think it’s really important to have a way to meet new people, especially for freshmen right now. I really kind of envisioned phlox is like this virtual campus where you have this group chat and now you’re able to actually engage with these people. Once we emerge from COVID, you can use a group chat to make plans with people and like chat with them and take it at your own pace. We really just kind of want to bring your friend group to life and celebrate the friendships that you already have as well as all the people out there who you can meet.

Interviewer: What were key insights that you took away from your user interviews? How did they fine-tune your vision for the product and were there any patterns that you resonated with deeply?

Jamie Lee: Something that really stood out to me was that people stressed the social anxiety that they feel when meeting new people. There are a lot of people who are hyper aware of social stigmas that exists on current apps. Also, just the feeling of danger and discomfort and fear for safety when a lot of times people are on platforms alone and that was like mainly dating apps, like we’re not. I really envision us as more of like a group chatting platform elevated versus a spin on a dating app. That was something that really emerged from conversations as people talking about their dating app experiences and how they felt uncomfortable in the past. And so I really wanted to come up with a solution for those struggling with social anxiety and discomfort and feeling unsafe on social media platforms.

Interviewer: This idea of virtual social anxiety — I’ve never thought about that before — but it rings so true. And I think that users have made their own solutions to that in a way on existing platforms, like with Finstas on Instagram and things like that.

Jamie Lee: I was just gonna say it’s interesting because, to kind of answer the question more, Gen Z has grown up in social media. We don’t even think about these things anymore about how deeply they affect us. They’re just second nature… we don’t even think why is it that we have Finstas? Why is it that Instagram now has like a best friends list? I think that we have experienced the negative effects of scale as today’s social networks have grown over the past decade. We become so obsessed with superficial signals of validation such as swipes, likes, and comments that we’re not connecting in the way that these platforms originally intended.

Interviewer: CWAVE is a VC club, so we’re interested in what it’s like for a founder, especially being our age and approaching fundraising and other VCs. What was that experience like?

Jamie Lee: Yeah. I am hoping to wrap up our pre-seed right now. I ended up raising a friends and family round. Basically, what I did first was I just started drafting the pitch deck and I started doing this back in like September and it took a lot of iterations. I think I have like over 70 versions of it. It has really changed a lot and I think what’s most important is learning how to be super concise. I’ve learned how to narrow down the problem and solution and paint this picture in people’s minds.

And what was definitely challenging in the beginning was trying to connect with people and talk to different people who are older and like not necessarily understanding of the problem that Gen Z faces. It is really a lot of networking. I’ve met some incredible people who have just really opened doors for me and that’s been a super exciting experience to just talk to people who I have idolized for years. In the beginning, I was definitely really nervous, being younger and a minority and like being someone who the odds are not in my favor to receive funding. But I think people are looking for those opportunities now and starting to fund more diverse founders.

I think that the VC space is definitely something that I knew nothing about a couple months ago and it’s its own bubble, its own world. It has been cool to learn about and have people really take me under their wing and make connections. People say fundraising is like a full-time job and it’s true. It’s definitely challenging to switch back and forth between fundraising and building. It’s all very exciting.

Interviewer: How is Flox differentiated and how do you envision it will be used in the future?

Jamie Lee: First and foremost, essentially every social platform out there today is individual-based. What I realized is that I don’t like doing things alone. I don’t know when’s the last time I went to a party alone or a bar alone. Why is it that we’ve kind of made this assumption that these social experiences should also be alone? So, um, I would say that’s really like the obvious key differentiators is the fact that the group model really lends itself to replicating more natural social settings and how we actually want to interact as human beings. On other platforms, there’s a hostile culture and uncomfortable expectations.

You’re able to kind of visualize exactly what is expected of you when you get on those apps. At Flox, we want to remove those pressures and those expectations for people. So I would say that’s also key differentiator. And then lastly, like I think like being a Gen Z built company, there’s a complete different culture and brand to us that is quite different from millennial-led apps. And I’m really excited about that. I think we’re going to be entering a whole new wave of social with Flox among the other platforms that will be really leading a change for what Gen Z wants.