#cronomio

Tired of all the invitations bumping up on Facebook? Can not remember what you have already signed up for? A brand new App Cronomio will take care of it. This week Thinking Cup shared a cup of coffee with its founder, twenty-four year old Sciences Po Master student, Iurie Cordunean who explained to us how a simple App on your mobile phone can change your social life for better.

 Iurie, tell us how it all started

Starting from my student life at Dijon campus where there is a very rich student life I always had an issue with the time planning. It’s a key element of our daily routine, but it’s very time-consuming. During my Masters at Sciences Po Paris Economics and Business school it became even worse: I searched for years a way to optimise the process, blaming for the failure the clunky tools and myself. With the boom of the user-friendly mobiles in the recent years, both my phone and my life got filled with super-optimized ways to waste my time. So my social life indeed got better. However, even with all the fancy Apps organizing your free time is still a challenge.

That is how I realized that the problem lays not in our ability to organise ourselves, but the fact that we have no control over the events we try to fit in. Moreover, we don’t want to. We want to be spontaneous. We will always find time for the events we love, but the future is unpredictable and following all the updates about those events it tiring and time-consuming. The self organisation issue turned into an opportunity to create an App that will help everybody discover and interact with the events they really care about. That’s how Cronomio was born. When I realized its potential I decided to take my Gap year to give it a try and it worked out. So that is our story.

How does your App work?

Cronomio allows you to discover events tailored to your interests, at the right moment, and gives you an easy way to do the best of your time. You can discover future events you like and keep track of them in an intuitive way, or decide what to do at the last moment.

Practically the app is very easy to use, focusing on three tabs. A “Calendar” tab with all the planned events from your calendars and those discovered in Cronomio. A “Trending” tab which offer information on the most popular events and a “Now” tab, with last-minute suggestions for what’s most important at the moment. The suggestions are based on user’s preferences, past activity, friends’ activity and geographical location. Overall the app mimics a personal guide to events (or this one friend who always knows about all cool stuff). So basically we strive to offer the most personalised and smartest way to discover best events that are tailored specifically to passions, interests and social aspirations of every user.

Is it free?

As a popular saying goes – time is money, so we decided that our App will be free of charge for our users and we will focus on the advertising revenues.

Your App is very innovative and it is certainly a 21st century necessity. Why did you choose this name Cronomio that reminds us of the Ancient Greece?

The trend today is for short, catchy names but we think that the time is a transcendent concept, with a deep meaning. Cronomio means “My Time”, a subconscious fusion of time, with the reference to “Chronos” and space with the sweet Italian ending.

On what platforms do you actually work and in your opinion what are the platforms of the future?

We are in Beta Testing now and iterating continuously. For this reason Cronomio is available only on Android. The work required to develop in parallel on multiple platforms grows exponentially and we will release an iOS version of our App only when we will find an equilibrated product-market fit. We decided to start the development on Android because this platform has a bigger market penetration, and also because remodeling the structure of a calendar is easier on an open-source platform. However, both of those platforms as equally important for us in the long term as they are complementing each-other on the market and there is no sign that this status quo will change in the near future.

Cronomio intents however to change the rules of the game for social platforms. Today there are platforms regrouping the information about our present and past. They offer easy access to the photos, videos, and event thoughts. However, we believe that the next Big Thing is a platform, which will regroup our intentions, will break the time wall and offer a comprehensive view on who we are not only in the past but also who we will be in the future. And at Cronomio we are already making the first steps to build this platform.

It is expensive to launch your own startup? What are the essentials for you?

“The need is mother of invention” - this saying applies to many aspects of starting your own project and financing is not very different. In general software-based startups, like Cronomio, require early-stage financing for MVP (Minimal Viable Product) development. In Cronomio we have got very lucky with our team members who have shown a great degree of flexibility. This allows us to overcome the financing gap between product creation and reaching product maturity sufficient to raise seed-round of investment.

In principle, when you launch a startup you should be aware from the beginning that you will always be short in finances, but this should only boost your creativity. So being original to find the easiest and cheapest ways to do expensive and complicated things should be in the DNA of every startup.

What has been your greatest achievement so far?

So far the greatest achievement is putting together our team, which managed to find the core of the problem and build a MVP in record time.

How big is your team and how did you find them?

Currently there are 4 people working full time on Cronomio - two business developers, a front-end engineer and a back-end engineer. We got also the help of a web designer, a tester and a Marketing Ninja. Most of team members have known each other before Cronomio project got started either from classes and social gatherings linked to Sciences Po community or through common friends. We were also very lucky with technical members of the team whom we met through an entrepreneur that we regularly keep in touch. We simply explained to them our idea, showed work that we have done already and got them on-board. But don’t be tricked by how easy it sounds (smiles). Frankly hearing their “yes” to our project has been one of the best moments in our history so far.

From the very beginning I focused on recruiting motivated, ambitious, skilled and frankly a little crazy people. At the end of the day it is the team members who come up with new insights and inspirations that are crucial for the development of any project. It is also good to know that there is someone there to give you a little kick at the time when you need it the most.

Why are there no girls in the team?

In our recruitment efforts we are focused on finding motivated people with high development potential. These are our only criteria and it just happened that we ended up with males-only team. We do however work with a great app tester whom we would love to recruit full time once such need arises.

Having said that we already identified and widely discussed that issue and are determined to add gender diversity to other kinds of “diversities” present in our team. In fact we are now looking for a marketing director and I have a feeling that this time it may be a woman- so ladies you are very welcome to send us your CVs if you are interested a startup world.

How do you communicate? Do you have an office?

As we are in the early stage of development we thought that investing in office space was not the best use of our resources. Instead we use whole bunch of online communication tools on daily basis - Slack, Asana, Jira, Skype, Viber are only a couple of examples. We supplement this daily communication with frequent meetings in various corners of France. They allow us to discuss critical issues, check our progress on multiple fronts and amend long term plans.

However, as our project expands and the team sees new additions we undertook necessary steps to get office space. In fact we have just been admitted to Pépinière 27 and are in the process of negotiating final details.

What education is necessary if you want to launch a startup? Does one actually need to finish a university to start his own business?

There is no need to finish a university to start your own business, but it certainly helps. At the beginning you will be multitasking and even if nothing you studied directly applies you will realize that the presentation skills you acquired are essential. If having learned a lot is not a prerequisite, being able to learn fast and efficiently is crucial. Moreover, the university is very likely to provide you a network of people who can become co-founders. More generally, it is a rich environment in which new ideas appear on regular basis – and that is exactly what you will be looking for!

What are your plans for the nearest future?

Cronomio launched the Private Beta at Sciences Po in February 2015. We are planning now an expansion to other selected universities in Paris by the end of the month. Our objective is to have a completely functional public product by September.  

Which advice can you give to the young people who want to launch their start-up?