Partner Article

New ‘Female-Only’ Social Network Expands to UK

This Valentine’s period, forget matching on Tinder with your new beau.

This February, like-minded women are being given the opportunity to expand into people’s communities of friends with the launch of GirlCrew - a social netowrk to make female friends - into the UK,

With a strong presence already in the Irish and Australian markets, GirlCrew has created a unique platform focused on connecting like-minded women.

Although a digital community, its aim is to facilitate friendships in person; offering an additional channel in which to do so – find a group of girls to travel with, meet for coffee, start a business. Anything is possible with ‘the crew’. Members can participate in online group chat and offline events, and many friendships have formed.

This innovative Irish-born brand is in a strong position in the social networking space; seeing its community engagement increase by over 200% in the last month alone[1]. Already holding over 100,000 members across 46 cities worldwide, including Dublin, Cork, Melbourne, New York, Toronto and San Francisco, the company is looking to grow its presence in UK cities in the next three months[2]. GirlCrew has seen huge demand worldwide for platonic friendship groups, with waiting lists already formed in more than 50 cities around the globe.

Building a growing global tech company by investing only €60 in the first year, GirlCrew’s three female co-founders Elva Carri, Aine Mulloy and Pamela Newenham are passionate about enabling women to make friends, network in a social and professional capacity, seek advice and share knowledge. The idea came about one Friday night in 2014, when Elva Carri wanted to go dancing, but her friends were all unavailable. She put out a call for some platonic dancing friends on Tinder and quickly garnered more than 100 enthusiastic matches. A ‘Tinder Crew’ was born, which later transformed into GirlCrew.

The trio were invited to meet Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg to celebrate the company’s Birthday in 2016, with the Facebook founder imparting advice to always ‘put the community first’.

Harnessing the soaring demand for friendship and community, GirlCrew has tapped into a market; facilitating friendship in person, even in an ever-digitised era. In order to achieve this, Enterprise Ireland, the third largest seed investor in Europe, has helped accelerate the company’s growth through assisting in the development of a clearly refined strategy. Implementation of this strategy this year has affirmed its UK market entrance, with a predicted community growth of more than 10,000 members in the next six months.

Pamela Newenham, co-founder of GirlCrew said: “We believe real friendships happen in person, however sometimes, you need a nudge and extra channel in order to meet these new like-minded people. This is how the GirlCrew concept came about. Innovation and expanding into new markets, is fundamental for a company like ours if we are to continue facilitating friendship city by city and through the support and guidance of Enterprise Ireland, we have received valuable advice in seeking new, fruitful areas to explore.”

Enterprise Ireland is facilitating and strengthening ties for Irish companies within the UK through investment, supporting R&D, management and training. Padraic Geraghty, Market Advisor at Enterprise Ireland UK, said: “The UK will continue to be a hugely important market for GirlCrew. We’re hugely passionate about innovative Irish companies and are looking forward to supporting them on their quest to become the leading social network for women globally.”

GirlCrew operates through an app available on iOS and Android, and a desktop platform. Women simply join the group for their area such as London, Edinburgh or Glasgow and there they can see what events are happening, read posts and comments from other members, write posts themselves and create events. They can also join international GirlCrew topic groups such as Travel, Careers, Entrepreneurs, Fashion & Beauty, Bloggers, Dating & Relationship Advice and Staying In. In the groups, members share tips, advice and knowledge on everything from getting a new job to finding a good restaurant for a first date.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Enterprise Ireland .