Wylo App – Interview & Startup Story
Meet Wylo App’s Founder
I am Omnath. I’m a tech enthusiast driven by the desire to bring viable tech products and solutions to life. Before embarking on my journey to build the interest-based social networking platform Wylo, I worked as a lead software engineer at Nokia Networks.
I bring with myself more than five years of product and software development experience.
Q. When and How did you think about ‘Wylo’?
I understood the need for an interest-based social networking platform when I was about to graduate from my college as an electronics engineer: I realized I never had an interest in Electronics.
I was more into web design and development and it took me some time to realize that. It was a problem I found quite common amongst others in my batch, and the primary reason was the lack of exposure and connection with the right people.
And I wanted to change that. I wanted to help people do what truly interested them.
The problem, however, was that we lacked an organised way to research and find the right people and content to explore our interests. That’s how I came with the idea to create an application that would organize the internet based on individual interests.
I planned to develop an application that has everything—from top people to top content—organised under specific topics. All that the users would need to do is find one’s area of interest and join the tribe.
And that was how Wylo — What You LOve — came into being.
Q. From whom you got the inspiration to start Wylo and who is your mentor?
I was always passionate about starting my own business. I suppose that came from my family. Both my dad and my brother are running successful businesses. It definitely added to the desire, but starting Wylo was never an inspiration from that aspect.
Rather, the motivation for Wylo was born from the experiences and the pain points I had explained in my answer to the previous question.
I knew there can be a better way to share and consume information on the internet and that’s how I started working on it.
If you ask who my mentor is – I actually don’t have anyone in particular. Though my entrepreneur friends are my perfect source of valuable advice. I also read quite a lot of books on startups, businesses and entrepreneurship.
That actually helps a lot.
Q. Introduce Wylo’s Co-Founder and Team.
I am the only founder at Wylo currently. But I am working on bringing new members to the core team.
At present, there are three team members apart from me, who focus on the technology and product. I am also looking to expand the team to areas of marketing, public relations and community management.
Q. Explain more about Wylo, What makes you special and How you think is it different from other similar startups?
Wylo is a social networking app that helps you explore and find content from across the internet and connect with like-minded people. Everything based on your interests.
We built Wylo with a vision to make it easier for everyone to explore the unsorted cluster on the internet. When users connect with the right people and easily find the right information from all over the internet, they can have insightful discussions on those topics.
This creates room for faster growth of people and brings opportunities for them to collaborate and set out to do new things.
For example, two developers could meet in a community and plan their next application, or two or more travelers could plan their next hike to a mountain. The only limit is actually how far people can think.
What makes Wylo unique:
1) Exploring made easier: Wylo disintegrates the unsorted cluster of information on the internet and places them under relevant topics. Users can tap into any topic and serve their brains with exactly what they want.
Or, they can further narrow down their search by choosing specific niche listed under those topics.
To start with, Wylo has more than 50 topics and additional niche communities under each of those topics. As the app evolves, many more topics will be added and new communities will be created.
2) Finding people that matter: Meaningful connections benefit everyone in the long term.
Wylo brings its users the most relevant people according to what topics they find interesting. Finding people based on their interests was never easier.
3) Discovering one’s interests: Interest patterns, a feature that will be made available with the main launch of Wylo, will help those who are unaware of their interests.
With interest patterns, Wylo users can understand their interests through graphs and stats based on what they spend most time exploring.
Wylo also suggests users suitable people, communities and content based on these interest patterns.
4) Bringing everything to the users: Wylo saves users the effort of searching for what they like. Based on the topics of their interests, Wylo automatically brings the best content and people to them.
Q. What challenges did you face while setting up Wylo? How did you overcome it?
Although I had experience building products earlier, starting my own venture was very different and challenging.
The first challenge was finding and on-boarding the right people for the team; people who believed and saw potential in the idea of Wylo.
Marketing the idea, finding an office space, managing the finance, balancing the resources, building a good product, etc. were other definite challenges that I faced. It’s actually true for anyone who is working on their new venture.
But to be frank, anything new you do is always going to be tough. But if you persist and keep doing things consistently, everything falls in place at some point in time. I guess that is the key — persistence. What you fear to be new, teaches you a lot and you suddenly become good at it.
|Read Also: Sona Founder of ‘Mapple Dreams – Express Entry to PR’ Shares Her Story |
Q. What’s the Current Path, Wylo‘s Funding Status and What are the Future plans?
Right now our focus is towards making the product better every day to deliver more value to our users. We are also working day in and day out to prepare Wylo for the main launch.
We are also preparing to raise seed funds in the near future. We will use the funds to expand the team further and better our technology.
In plain sight, our future plans looks like adding more users, more topics and more communities. We want to make it easier for people to connect with relevant people and find content that fits with what they love to explore.
Wylo App’s Website | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter | LinkedIn
I think Viral Indian Diary is doing a tremendous job in bringing inspirational startup stories from across the country. I have been following them and I actually find it to be a perfect place for people to share, read experiences and get inspired.
I wish the entire team good luck.