By Riley Kaminer
People talk about a lot of ‘tipping points’ when it comes to #MiamiTech. An amount of VC dollars raised. In migration of talent. Number of unicorns.
My main metric is something much simpler: how hard it is to meet non-tech people when out and about. And in Miami – especially for those of us running in tech circles – that has become surprisingly hard.
While that may be a good sign for our local tech ecosystem, I personally have found myself being frustrated by the lack of diversity in my friend group. So when I was approached by Base, a Miami startup that aims to connect people through meaningful social experiences, I was immediately intrigued.
Breaking friendship silos is tough, with so much of our lives revolving around work and family commitments. But building friendships is a key antidote to our loneliness epidemic – one that is increasingly harming our physical and mental health.
Potential members are interviewed before being accepted to join Base’s community. The questions include things like “if you were to write the story of your life, what would the current chapter be?” Base also asks people about their dream dinner guests (the most common responses, according to the team, are Michelle Obama, Elon Musk, and Oprah Winfrey).
Base also pulls this information to their so-called Base Index, a matching algorithm that aims to determine which members will get along the best.
“Base is making it very easy to facilitate a high-end conversation with incredible people,” founder and CEO Kaben Clauson told Refresh Miami. Clauson originally moved to Miami to co-found YC-backed Pigeon.
At the core of Base’s members-only offerings are dinners. There is much mystique around these experiences, with the Base team telling you when and where to show up – nothing more, nothing less.
I was excited when I showed up to my first Base dinner at a cozy Italian restaurant in Downtown. The experience brought together eight of us, all from a wide variety of industries and four different nationalities. (And yes, there were some other tech people.)
Base curates some questions to stimulate the discussion, but we found that the conversation naturally flowed. At the end of the experience, we created a Whatsapp group that continues to be active weeks later.
I could tell that the matching algorithm improved a bit for my second dinner, perhaps having taken into account my feedback from the first experience. At this dinner, the diversity of backgrounds was even greater: including a therapist, DJ, and medical spa owner. These were the exact kinds of people I was struggling to meet and that made me enjoy the dinner even more.
“People were telling us that they were feeling a lot of isolation, and that Base has given them a consistent sense of community,” asserted Clauson, who co-founded Base in January alongside COO Natalia Martinez-Kalinina and CTO Ricardo Vázquez. Since then, the company has raised a $500,000 pre-seed led by Treble VC and has a six-person team.
Tech innovation has played a major role in the developing Base, both in terms of creating the Index and facilitating the operations behind every dinner experience. Base is also currently working on an app to give members a chance to connect outside of their experiences.
“We firmly believe that the problem that we’re solving for people here in Miami exists for ambitious creatives and professionals all across the country – not just in major cities,” said Clauson, signaling that Base plans to launch in a second city later this year. In Miami alone, the company reports that they have had upwards of 1,000 applicants thus far for Base memberships, which cost $100 per month.
For now though, I’m excited to experience Base’s new offering: a wine tasting. I wonder who I’ll meet this time around!
READ MORE IN REFRESH MIAMI:
- In a sea of contacts, FriendApp helps users focus and find their tribe
- Pigeon Loans lands $2.5M seed round to level up loan platform
- Miami-born Pigeon Loans joins Y Combinator to grow online peer-to-peer lending platform
- Ready to make some friends? Venzi’s got you covered
- Sparkseeker aims to combat divisiveness through its new social media platform
