There are brilliant things to be found in other people. A friend, a romantic partner, a job, a new customer or contact, a new community, an opportunity, a life lesson or the inspiration to do something wonderful…

But the stress of life often stops us from reaching out. Meeting new people can take up too much time, effort or money. Uncertainty about others’ willingness to talk makes it hard to start conversations. And there's no way to know who we'd most appreciate talking to.

Broach is an app to help solve these problems. It creates easy opportunities to meet new people in daily life. It uses bluetooth to help avoid awkwardness when talking to someone for the first time. It'll pair you with people most likely to inspire you.

This is how it works:

1) In the Broach app, you can turn “broadcasting” on or off whenever you like.
2) Go about your day as normal.
3) When two broadcasting phones get within 10-30m of one another, the phones notice each other.
4) Broach predicts whether or not the two people would appreciate talking to each other. If yes...
5) Both phones vibrate and show a notification: an “Invitation to broach!”
6) You can choose to accept the invitation or ignore it.
7) If both people accept, then the phones send their names and pictures to the other person’s phone
8) The two people can now recognise each other, and have a conversation in real life.

Nobody can judge you for your online profile,
because nobody can see your profile without meeting you first in real life.

Nobody can harass you, or single you out,
because nobody can choose to meet a particular person using Broach.

Nobody even knows that you have Broach,
unless they have Broach too and they broach with you.

If you have any other ideas for improvement or want to collaborate, please reach out to [email protected] . I’d find suggestions and advice very valuable.