As the Innovation District takes shape in downtown Chapel Hill, we want to highlight some of the ideas, people, and products that have come out of it. We recently sat down with Willie Barron and Maddi Lane to discuss their new app, WAVE.
What is WAVE?
WAVE is a nightlife app for bar-goers and bar owners. Patrons can see what’s happening in the local area and coordinate plans with their friends. It can help owners connect with one another and their patrons. The platform is currently undergoing extensive beta testing. “We hope to add more users this summer,” says Willie.
How does it work?
So how does WAVE work? “It’s like if SnapChat, Instagram, and Yelp had a baby!” jokes Maddi Lane. Users will be able to create plans for certain days/times by seeing the events happening at local venues. They can also share their plans with other users by creating friend groups. That way, every one in the group can make plans to hang out at the same place, at the same time!
Take us through the process of creating the app.
“People don’t know where to go. They find out about things after the fact,” explains Willie. The app was born out of his enjoyment of local nightlife. “This idea was sparked when I was 22, 23 so my focus was nightlife. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve seen the value in moving to more leisurely activities.” He started working on it in January 2019 with market research and curating data. “We spent a lot of time prototyping.” As he and his team learned more through the prototyping, they built the app out…and then COVID happened. “We made an aggressive pivot,” Willie says. Instead of focusing on finding parties and live music, the app featured bar capacities for social distancing.
In 2022, they finally hit a stride. Currently, WAVE needs $100,000 in capital as Willie had built the beta himself to save money. He taught himself coding and found a platform that worked for his needs. “We’re hoping over this next year or so that we can raise funds to really scale up,” he explains.
How do you foresee WAVE helping downtown businesses?
Most marketing strategies for local bars and restaurants are very similar. But at the consumer level, that’s not how people make plans. Maddi explains that EventBrite and Yelp are as close are you’re going to get, but there’s nothing to tie it all together. The social aspect is missing. Businesses and consumers want to do more, but patrons don’t often hear about events and promos in time. Willie explains “The consumer and the business are trying to reach other but they just don’t know how.”
By integrating social networking, WAVE creates a marketing platform that can be huge for local businesses. Users can build micro-communities and collaborate. The team also hopes to add in more features and analytics for both patrons and owners as the app grows and work with the Chapel Hill Downtown Partnership on advertising and marketing.
Why downtown Chapel Hill?
WAVE is an app born in downtown Chapel Hill, for use in downtown Chapel Hill. Willie explains why he chose to use the area for beta testing the WAVE app: “I’ve looked at Chapel Hill for a long time as dormant potential. I think this place has so much room for growth. I think that this is almost the perfect market to incubate in. It’s small enough that people can talk but big enough that everybody isn’t connected. Plus, I just love Chapel Hill!”.
Willie and Maddi have reached out to local businesses primarily on the west end of Franklin Street for collaborations. Their team has created a great working relationship with owners and seek to help with events and promotions to drive foot traffic. This includes concerts, bar crawls, and the reimagining of The Pitch event space. The building, located at 462 W. Franklin St., is undergoing aggressive renovations with the goal of a grand opening in the fall. It will boast an event space, co-working area, meeting rooms, a venue on the third floor, a creator space with 3D printers, camera equipment, green screen, and podcast studio, and a student-run coffee shop. Willie and Madi hope to work with the Shuford Program in Entrepreneurship at UNC to identify top students and teach them how to run a business.
“Now we have the opportunity to really make some waves, pun intended.”