Montreal mom creates networking app for women
Need a babysitter in an hour? There’s an app for that
When Geneviève Nadeau moved to Nuns' Island from the Plateau–Mont-Royal borough, she was pregnant with her second child and felt isolated from her new community.
That's when she turned to social media to try and connect with other women.
"I thought it was a great, so I wanted to try something similar but more oriented towards women and better maintained," said Nadeau, creator of Women In Mind, a new app that is slowly picking up steam across the province.
Nadeau described Women In Mind as a knowledge-gathering tool.
The app connects women in different neighbourhoods and allows them to ask each other questions, post local updates, find events and deals and favourite things for later use. It runs on both iPhone and Android smartphones.
More social experiment than money maker
The idea began as a Facebook group in January 2014, then became a website which grew to 5,000 subscribers before Nadeau decided to create the app.
The Montreal software company OSEDEA developed the app for Women in Mind.
The app works differently from a traditional Facebook group, Nadeau says, in that the information is provided by ambassadors who work for her and alerts go straight to the user's smartphone.
Boutiques pay a $25 fixed monthly fee to Women In Mind if they want sponsored content but apart from that, the app isn't a money maker.
"Right now we have no revenue model," said Nadeau, who paid to build and run the application out of pocket, adding that she had help from family members, friends and a few other women who use the app.
Nadeau would not say precisely how much the app cost but said it was between $80,000 and $150,000. Still, she's not worried about losing her investment.
"We already have 2,000 subscribers, and we think there are going to be more," said Nadeau.
"For now, the business is more of a social project than a money-making machine," she said.