A Harvard graduate is building a new sharing economy app for millennials

Photo credit: Kennisland .

You walk home after a long, tiring day at work. All you’re looking forward to is grabbing a few cold ones from the fridge and plonking yourself on the couch. The newest Game of Thrones came out last night and you’ve avoided Facebook all day just to prevent spoilers.

As you enter your apartment you’re horrified to see that the beer has run out. Your girlfriend left a note on the fridge – she had an impromptu house party to attend and took all the booze with her. And that’s not your only worry – there’s a pool of water in the kitchen. A leaky faucet is behind that. You have no idea how to fix it and now you’re on the verge of pulling your hair out.

If only there was someone close by who you could reach out to. Someone who’d come fix the pipes and bring a six pack with them along the way. It’s past working hours for all the handymen you know – and it’d be obscenely expensive to have someone over right now.

Fortunately, now there’s an app for that.

Getmii is a broadcast tool that relays your request, no matter how petty or absurd, to 1,000 people closest to you. Basically whenever you need something, just type it in the app and wait for people to get back to you. Terms of exchange can be negotiated via the in-app chat function, which makes it different from the likes of TaskRabbit and Postmates who have predetermined rates for specific tasks.

“We were originally working on a logistics app in Bangkok when an earthquake struck Nepal in April 2015,” explains Max Meyer, co-founder of Getmii. “We saw profound basic needs of the Nepalese go unmet – food, water, shelter, even blood – and immediately asked ourselves, ‘What if there was a way for anyone to broadcast any need to people around them who can help?’ That’s how Getmii was born.”

From Harvard to the sharing economy

Max graduated from Harvard in 2012 and worked for McKinsey in China before venturing out on his own. His two co-founders, Darryl Lau and Matthias Jeurgens, are veterans in the consulting and IT space.

He adds that Getmii users have fulfilled over 150,000 needs. Some interesting use cases revolved around pizza delivery, Chinese language tutors, obtaining a summer internship, and finding a dentist.

“Imagine if all the needs of the people near us were immediately visible. No matter what problem, question, or need we have, there’s almost certainly someone in our vicinity who knows something about it or can help out,” explains Max.

Getmii’s Max Meyer

Getmii’s roots are in Bangkok. The entire engineering team is based there and the app was first piloted in the Thai capital. Since then it’s expanded to more than 60 college campuses in the US, where students use the app to find study partners, arrange food deliveries, and embark on potential romances. There’s also a large number of users in Korea and Japan.