Company: Meeow
Founder(s): Chris Rabbitt and Simon Glenn
Website: https://meeow.co/
Description: Meeow – a portmanteau of ‘Meet Now’ – is an online video networking platform utilising artificial intelligence to bring four people together to talk business, life and more.
When COVID-19 first hit, Simon Glenn was immediately impacted from both personal and business perspectives. Having built a branding consultancy on years of consistent networking, lockdown cut off his access to potential new client conversations. His solution? ‘A Zoom a Day’, inviting four people who’d never met before to jump on an hour-long Zoom, once a day, to chat business, life and collaboration. It was wildly popular.
Early on, Chris Rabbitt, a sales director, took part in a Zoom a Day and instantly recognised the potential of the format. He knew that together they could change the way millions of small businesses network, forever. On that day, ‘Meeow’ was conceived as a disruptor in the business networking sector.
The beauty of Meeow is that it allows people to network from anywhere, at any hour of the day, with anyone across the globe due to its instant ‘Meeow Now’ feature. No need for links or pre-arranged meetings, you can simply log on, on the hour, every hour and click to join a Meeow. The platform decides who you Meeow with, based on what it knows about you. And, with only four Meeowists in every meeting, it keeps conversations intimate and powerful.
The first 12 months of business saw Meeow operating a free-to-use, Zoom-based platform. High demand saw growth from 5 meetings per week to 58, with the assistance of 28 volunteer hosts. After months of hard work and investment discussions however, Meeow has now launched its own proprietary platform. The service is offered on a very affordable and unlimited monthly subscription model and includes a series of features which make networking much more accessible and safer.
These built-in tools provide:
• ‘Hostless’ meetings – onscreen guidance creates the structure of presentations and outcomes meaning Meeow is infinitely scalable.
• Conversational prompts for newbies who struggle to contribute at first.
• Anonymous reporting of disruptive attendees.
• Conversational transcriptions for the hard-of-hearing.
Early-stage Meeowists have reported finding multiple opportunities to collaborate, invaluable business support and advice and new business through the power of Meeow and it is extremely popular amongst young people and solopreneurs. Why? Solopreneurism can be lonely and Meeow gives the opportunity to speak to the world and garner support and energy from anywhere.
Not only has Meeow helped beat the lockdown blues for thousands, but it is creating new opportunities. New businesses have already been born entirely within Meeow, from experienced sales professionals bringing their knowledge to the small business world, to students deciding to plough their own furrow in the absence of other opportunities.
Meeow 2.0 was officially launched on March 18th and already has over 500 paying subscribers from around the world, with more joining every day. Meeow is changing the face of business networking, forever.
