Co.Buddy

Background‍

Young professionals face a lot of distractions - whether it is social media or procrastination on a project they just don’t feel like doing. Startup founders, freelancers, and consultants face a common problem of procrastination and inactivity. 

‍

Peer accountability - it works for all kinds of things. When you have a group of friends who can nudge you, you are more likely to follow through. According to a study done by North Carolina State University, a 15-week online weight-loss program found that participants with buddies lost more weight and waist inches than those who took the course without buddy support. Many people don’t have the motivation to take that initiative and do it on their own. 

In addition, many participants (ages 18-24) in our user survey stated that the number one reason why they did not achieve their goals was due to procrastination and lack of accountability.

User pain point + feedback 

Co.Buddy was designed for users such as Raymond. Raymond is a software engineer seeking to learn React and Javascript. Raymond is introverted and struggles with meeting new people both virtually and at in-person events. Raymond wishes that he had multiple options to choose from in case my initial match isn't looking to learn similar languages based on my preferences.

Landing on the solution 

Co.Buddy helps young tech professionals develop new skills by beating procrastination and inactivity through peer accountability. In addition, Co.Buddy empowers young tech professionals to grow in their careers by practicing what they love. The Co.Buddy platform is designed to help you focus on the skills that will help you land your dream job.

All you do is tell us your goal, and we will match you with someone who can help you reach it. We'll track your progress, and keep the conversation going with a platform full of resources to help you or your buddy succeed. 

‍

Explanation of solution 

Our solution was to pair Next.js’ fast development cycle with Firebase’s easy-to-integrate back-end. That allowed us to be able to quickly authenticate users and store their information onto Firestore (Firebase’s real-time document database). Once we have their information, we can look through the database for existing users that haven’t been matched and pair the most suitable ones together. That became easy to do since Next.js allows us to write our own server-side functions easily through the /API/ route in the /pages directory. 

Next Steps

We plan on improving and adding new features to Co.Buddy. Some of the features we’ve discussed include:

• A task manager/to-do list for users to add their goals to so they and their partner can easily keep track of what they need to achieve. 
• The ability to edit your user account (add images, bio, age, location, extra information)
• Push notifications so when you match with someone or get a message from your match you are notified even when the app isn’t running.
• Group matching to facilitate a community of similar goal-oriented people so they can achieve their goals together.

We hope that Co.Buddy will become an extension of Co.Lab as Co.Lab continues to scale so alumni can continue to network, grow their skills, and partner with one another after their cohort ends.