Pie Social App tried to make friends, good but not groundbreaking

• I tried Pie Social, a million-dollar app that encourages socializing through in-person meetings.
• It’s currently being tested in Chicago, so I’ve attended three events through the app.
• The app makes meetings accessible, but isn’t exactly groundbreaking: it’s mostly a directory.

Making friends is apparently a million-dollar problem – and the latest app trying to solve it is Pie Social.

The Chicago-based startup was founded by Andy Dunn, co-founder and former CEO of menswear brand Bonobos. As of October, Pie reported that it had raised approximately $24 million in capital.

The goal is clear: “Make it easy to make friends,” Dunn wrote on LinkedIn in October.

“We are building a social app to combat this problem. The job we have to do is to make it easy to make friends,” he wrote. “Our vision is a world where doing things you like, with people you like, should be as easy as calling an Uber.”

Since the app is being tested in Chicago, where I live, I decided to see how effective Pie Social is at finding community, especially in social circles I wouldn’t normally be drawn to.

So I downloaded the app and used it for a few days. Here’s how it went.