Social Connections

Through relationship-building app Les Amis, thousands of young professionals, especially women, are finding meaningful friendships - at a time when friends are needed most. (Credit: Les Amis) Anna Bilych wants to be friends – which, she’s found, is easier said than done. The 27-year-old tech professional has made several moves to new cities, and new countries, over the course of her career. And each time, she found loneliness alongside opportunity. Ironically, she’s far from alone in this regard – a quarter of all people, throughout the world, report feeling lonely on a fairly regular basis. Her personal struggles to forge friendships, and her awareness of how widespread the problem is, sparked the launch of Les Amis, an app designed to bring young professional women together – not just via work emails. Roughly 18,000 users scattered throughout eight European cities have turned to the app as a social resource, Bilych says. Besides Barcelona, where she’s based, Les Amis also has a presence in spots like Paris and Madrid. And as of last month, it is now available in the U.S., having launched in Austin to “high local interest.” Her focus on urban areas is based on her observation that “the bigger the city, the higher the loneliness rate,” she says. Studies indeed show that, despite the higher concentration of people, connection remains especially elusive in urban areas. “Everyone is so busy. Everyone has their own agenda.” Helping Les Amis users push past the demands of the daily grind to make real connections begins with having them fill out an application in which users supply the basics – age, location, etc. – as well as more about their lifestyle and assorted interests. The app then does the work of connecting individuals whose passions and habits align. This is facilitated, in large part, by Les Amis’ in-person events, which bring together such users to drink or dine in groups of 12, which Bilych says is the perfect size for fostering both collective talks and breakout chats. Afterwards, users can return to the app to note who they connected most with – if the feeling is mutual, they’ll be able to continue chatting with one another through Les Amis’ direct messaging service. This creates the sort of solid foundation needed for growing a meaningful relationship, Bilych says. “A lot of my really good friends were made at different concerts or festivals – something we experienced together. We remember the good vibes and good moments.” And such bonding opportunities can be tough to come by organically. In what could be our collective motto, Bilych notes: “It’s so hard to make friends as an adult.” Finding Your People Originally from Estonia, Bilych graduated Tallinn University of Technology and dove headfirst into her career, beginning with an internship at tax services provider Deloitte. Then, she landed a product analyst job at fintech company PayPal, for which she moved to Dublin – in February 2020, when she was just 22 years old. Of course, making friends as a young woman in a new city was basically impossible amid the start of Covid lockdowns. “I kept telling myself” that the pandemic was the problem, she says, but “it was very tough, in terms of my emotional state.” Then she moved to Barcelona in August 2021. “There was no Covid , nothing, but I was surprised that the same experience happened to me again.” Though to be fair, Covid was still playing a role in its way, she notes. She saw that many of us had lost a reliable “third place” – or, somewhere we gather and spend time that isn’t work or home. Technology has been increasingly occupying that void, with 48% of people now reporting that they socialize online more than they do in the real world. “We don’t even call a person anymore to order food, or a taxi,” Bilych says. And ChatGPT is increasingly filling professional and companionship gaps, she adds – industry experts are concerned, too. Her solution was to meet people where they are – namely, on their phones and laptops – then get them offline and into shared spaces. She teamed up with friend and fellow techie Oleg Pashinin to brainstorm social solutions that weren’t superficial, but that allowed women to find community with those whose lifestyles mirrored their own. The result was Les Amis, which they launched in January 2022. After learning the entrepreneurial ropes through accelerator Y Combinator’s offshoot startup school in 2021 (which teaches how to start a business but does not offer funding to participants), they bootstrapped their efforts to get up and running early the next year. They then completed a small fundraising round for angel investors in 2023 to help them scale. Bilych declined to disclose how much was raised in this round, as well as revenue figures. The company has grown significantly since its one-city debut, partially from profits earned through premium subscribers’ payments – and Bilych has plans to keep the momentum going. Her vision sees Les Amis expanding to facilitate professional and romantic connections down the road. And, she hopes to get into an ever-increasing number of cities, including more U.S. locations like New York City and Washington, D.C. Wherever and however she can be of help, really. “I’m getting really scared,” she confessed of her perspective on the state of the world, “which is why we need to push something like Les Amis even more – for people to have these real, human interactions.” ◼️ (Secondary image shows Les Amis co-founders Anna Bilych (right) and Oleg Pashinin. Credit: Les Amis)

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