A finalist in the live category, MyCoop is a social platform for residential buildings, making it easy for neighbors to communicate, share and get access to important information that matters – and hits them where they live. Founder (and boy next door) Alex Norman tells us more about a service.
Tell us about the service.
MyCoop.com is a free private social platform for residential buildings. Mycoop helps building residents easily connect, share, and mobilize around topics and interests that matter most to them, right where they live.
How is it different?
MyCoop is the first and only social communication platform designed for multi-unit residential buildings that puts control into the hands of the residents free of charge.
MyCoop enables residents to easily connect and communicate with each other, launch local discussions about the things that matter to the building, find shared resources, get access to local merchant and city information.
What market are you attacking and how big is it?
235K multi-unit residential buildings in NYC alone housing close to 8M people. 500K residential units in the affordable housing program.
What’s the number one complaint coop residents have?
FYI – We are pronounced ‘coop’ (aka chicken coop) we are in co-ops, condos and rental buildings. Number 1 complaint is not having a way to communicate with other residents in case of an emergency or urgent issue.
What is the business model?
Revenue from local merchants who want to advertise or promote services in buildings – we will charge subscription and/or take affiliate revenue from merchants who sell directly through our site.
Tell us about your experience with NYC Big Apps thus far.
Big Apps has been great. Prior to this challenge, we were having trouble finding people and resources to help us. This challenge has inspired people to volunteer around the mission to solve a shared NYC problem. Big Apps has also helped us internally by giving us more focus and purpose.
In which category is your app and why is your app the best in that category?
Living/Housing411 – They are looking for a central place for city information to exist that gives residents of the affordable housing program information about their rights and responsibilities. By creating a social environment for every buildings and being able to push content to those buildings digitally makes our app ideal.
Why is New York the place to launch your particular app?
New York has the highest # of multi-unit buildings of any city in the US.
What would winning NYC Big Apps mean for your company?
Winning would be huge. It would give us visibility and allow us to get into the 500K affordable residential units and illustrate our viability as a solution for the NYC and many other cities across the country.
If you could be put in touch with one investor in the New York community who would it be and why?
Ken Lerer – Lerer Ventures is a great VC firm that understands companies at our stage that are trying to solve big problems.
Where’s your favorite happy hour in New York?
Great question. I wish I knew of a good happy hour….
