These founders kept missing each other while traveling, so they built an app for that

Catching up with old friends (photo by Guillermo Alonso)

Julius Koehler and business partner Malko Schraner very nearly didn’t run into each other, which means their new startup almost didn’t happen. They were already old friends and frequented the same ski resort, but had no idea they were there at the same time. They only bumped into each other again randomly. Not long after that, the idea was formed for an app that would connect acquaintances in that kind of situation.

“We would’ve actually managed to meet each other if the app was out earlier,” quips Koehler.

The new app is CatchUp, which he, Schraner, and Theo Sarasin now run as co-founders from the startup’s base in Hong Kong. They see it as the best way for people to share their itineraries and reconnect with friends and acquaintances across the world.

New encounters

“The problem really with Facebook is that you put [your trip] as a status update and it just sinks in the newsfeed, so it’s never actually published to the correct people out of your thousand Facebook friends,” says Koehler.

To change that, the team wants people to “open your personal travel plans” with certain friends in order to set up opportunities to reconnect with friends when you’re next on holiday in Bali or on a business trip to Los Angeles.

(L-R) CatchUp’s Malko Schraner, Julius Koehler, and Michael Ng at the recent RISE conference in Hong Kong. Co-founder Theo Sarasin not pictured.

“What CatchUp does is that it looks into the future, so you can make a booking and search ahead of time, and check which people are going there – and arrange to meet them before you actually arrive at a certain city or place,” he explains.

The app connects with Facebook, but it’ll soon get support for LinkedIn to add in business networking catch-ups as well.

Facebook is all about now and what happened in the past and lacks any kind of “location transparency,” he adds. So the team see CatchUp as doing something vital – and complementary to the behemoth social network.

Network effect

Right now, the app’s usefulness is limited by the relatively small number of people using it. For your old friends to see your trip, they’ll also need to be signed up to CatchUp.