Today we’d like to introduce you to Andreas Freund.
So, before we jump into specific questions about the business, why don’t you give us some details about you and your story.
My story with DiveIn really started when I moved to Berlin in the summer of 2015. At the time, I was working at Blacklane, a technology service that helped international business travels book black cars. Shortly after I arrived, the “Refugee Crisis” truly broke out. However, when I wanted to mobilize, I found it really difficult.
It soon dawned on me that there had to be an easier way to find opportunities to take action with the causes we care about in our own backyards. As we dug into this problem, the idea for DiveIn slowly surfaced.
On the more personal side, I grew up in San Francisco as part of an immigrant family of social workers, activists, and entrepreneurs. So I guess, in some ways, DiveIn’s mission to break down barriers to civic engagement really feels natural to me and has all the more meaning.
We’re still at the beginning of our journey but we’re excited to start building a national member base of people who care about improving their local communities and just show up. We hope you join us!
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
Any startup faces its challenges and we certainly have seen ours. We’ve dealt with a lot of problems but the biggest ones that come to mind revolve around scalability and understanding more about the people we want to empower to contribute to their communities.
The first part was having enough volunteer opportunities. We do a lot of curating and have a great team that does an amazing job sourcing a ton of opportunities, organizations, and events. However, getting enough volume so that people have something to do in every major city in the US isn’t easy. That’s why we’re now working with VolunteerMatch to help our members find thousands of opportunities across the country. Solving this issue of volume took us a while to overcome.
We also realized that people need stories in order to commit and engage in improving their local communities. We’re all social beings and we need to know that we’re not alone. Volunteering and showing up takes effort and knowing there’s a group of your neighbors doing their part to get involved gives us that extra boost. This realization inspired us to include the Stories feature in our app so that folks can stay in the loop on the good work others are doing in the community and get inspired to keep at it.
Alright – so let’s talk business. Tell us about DiveIn – what should we know?
DiveIn empowers anyone to make a local impact through volunteering, connecting to nonprofits, and sharing stories.
When you sign up for DiveIn, the first thing you do is let us know what causes matter most to you and roughly where you are. Based on that, we surface volunteer opportunities, meaningful events, and local nonprofits for you to engage with. Our stories feature also allows our users to share their experiences from helping their local communities, make new connections, and inspire others.
What makes us most unique, in my mind, is that we not only help our users quickly discover ways to contribute to their local communities, but we also help them form connections with people who share their values through our social features. We’re all social beings and being able to see what others are doing to make their communities a better place can serve as the catalyst that leads to more consistent local community involvement.
In regards to what I’m most proud of, I’m really happy that we’ve found a way to help almost anyone in the US find ways to contribute but also the inspiration to get involved. There’s a lot of work left for us to do, but we know, if we’re successful, we’re going to help a lot of people make our world a better place. We all have a role to play and we’re just a catalyst for helping people realize their agency to make a difference.
Any shoutouts? Who else deserves credit in this story – who has played a meaningful role?
This is a great question. There are so many people who have helped build DiveIn into what it is today. It’s almost impossible for me to list them all but my co-founder, Shannon, deserves a ton of credit. She’s the operational genius behind DiveIn and helps everyone on the team stay organized and working actively to reach our goals. Her dedication to our mission coupled with her expertise and perseverance is nothing short of amazing. Without Shannon, DiveIn wouldn’t be possible. It’s as simple as that.
We’re still a really small team and everyone pulls their weight and then some. Chann, our marketing manager, is the creative brains behind how we tell our story and helps translate our ideas, products, and mission into relatable terms. Simply put, he helps us look good and spread the word about DiveIn in ways we could never do alone.
Nate, our content creator and photographer, is also someone that is crucial for our brand aesthetic. His eye for high-quality imagery, his never-say-never attitude, and ability to play multiple roles is critical for us as we build up our brand with limited resources and a small team.
Stephen, our Community Strategist, is the generalist every startup needs to build up a user-base and a great group of partners. We need folks like him on our team to help us grow and to establish the partnerships that amplify our reach.
Of course, nothing would be possible without our amazing engineers. We’re working with a rock-solid group of engineers and designers from Xmartlabs, a dev shop based out of Uruguay. Without all their hard work and technical expertise, DiveIn would be nothing more than an idea. They’re just a pleasure to work with and talented beyond measure. We’re lucky to work with them.
Last but not least, our advisors and investors deserve a ton of credit for believing in us, helping us form comprehensive strategies, and reaching the milestones necessary to keep growing. They’ve placed a lot of trust in us and their mentorship is invaluable as we continue on our journey.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://divein.app
- Phone: 415.425.2491
- Email: [email protected]
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/DiveIn.App/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pg/diveinco
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/DiveIn_App
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