Image: Shutterstock
It’s like Tinder, but infinitely cooler and probably less gross. A new app called Vina is helping women find new friends! If you’re a grown-up lady, then you know that making new friends as an adult is hard. But now there’s a new app called Vina that helps connect awesome ladies with awesome ladies—it’s a friendship finder for adults.
When users sign up for Vina, they fill out a brief personality questionnaire that asks questions about whether users are introverts, where they prefer to hang out, or listing their favorite activities. Once her profile is set up, the user can actually swipe left or right through other local profiles, and the app sends an introductory message to people when they match.
Vina founders Olivia June Poole and Jen Aprahamian created the new app because they understand how difficult it can be to make new friends as an adult. “Hey! Vina aims to solve the challenge of making new friends as adult women with a Tinder-style UX and a proprietary matching algorithm to suggest potential new friends based on mutual friends, proximity, and quiz data,” said the app’s launch statement. Vina launched in San Francisco on January 26th, and it will be available in New York City soon.
Poole and Aprahamian both work in the heavily male-dominated tech industry. They became friends when they started working together at General Assembly, a computer programming school. When Poole came up with the idea for Vina, she convinced Aprahamian to move to San Francisco and help her develop the new, super-cool service.
“Female friendships are absolutely essential,” says Poole. “We hope women find their new best friends, traveling partners, brunch dates, wing girls, mommy friends, workout partners, etc. on the platform.”
The goal of the app is to bring women together, to create solid support systems, and to celebrate female friendship. Vina wants “to drive a philosophy of community over competition among women,” Poole added. “We hope women everywhere will use the app to find the freedom and confidence that comes from having a strong community of friends supporting you.”
