Interview with Jason Sherman, the CEO of Spinnr [2023]

I’m Jason Sherman, the founder and CEO of Spinnr. We’re a friendship video platform that helps you to meet new people based on your hobbies and interests. We also have squads, which is a group functionality, where you can really get to the next level of engaging in activities with people in the squads and in real life. That’s the whole point of Spinnr, is to get out and enjoy your hobbies, activities and interests with other people that are like you.

As far as I can remember going back to being a kid and a teenager, I was always an entrepreneur, building and creating things, and always trying to take my skills to the next level. So over decades of trial and error and starting new businesses, trying startups, coming up with new ideas, and then making them come to fruition, I have found that I’ve become quite an expert in tech startups. I’ve started many of them over the course of my career, as well as writing books, teaching courses, a thriving podcast, a blog, and many other sources of information that I’ve been able to offer to the community and the world in terms of entrepreneurship. So of course, I’ve used all of these tactics, methodologies, strategies that I’ve implemented over the years, and that I’ve taught, in Spinnr. I have to practice what I preach in the end. Spinnr is the culmination of my life’s work, everything I’ve taught everybody over the course of 20 years, in one startup.

My motivation for creating Spinnr was when I realized during the pandemic that all of us were isolated. That’s the key here is we were home alone. Maybe we were in a social bubble with friends and family, but to get out and meet new people was very difficult. But even before the pandemic, it was difficult to meet new people, because you had basically two options, either dating apps, which are high-pressure romantic situations, or you have social media, which is basically people you already know, for the most part, and if you don’t know them, you’re probably never going to meet them. We found a huge gap in the market. And we plan on filling that gap.

The number one way Spinnr helps the world create authentic connections is through video. As they say, a picture says a thousand words, so then a video says a million. Through videos, you can hear me and see my expressions, you can see me smile, or you can see me frown. You can see me when I’m excited, or when I’m confused. So personality shines through video. That’s how authenticity really comes through. Not the glamour shots you see on Instagram, or the lip synching or dancing videos on TikTok. Spinnr doesn’t give you any kind of toxicity or any kind of notifications about liking and sharing and following. It’s more about your personality, your hobbies, your skills, telling a funny joke, or showing what you’re doing in your life. Rather than putting on tons of makeup, doing your hair, and getting all glammed up, it’s more about who you really are inside, by showcasing your personality in your videos.

So while there might be friendship apps out there, none are like Spinnr. We are 100% video based. This means video profiles, intro videos you send to people to introduce yourself, video messages, and video calls coming soon. We also have something unique called the Daily Spin. Every day at 2pm you get a random question that you can answer, which again showcases another part of your life. By having an entire platform built around video, it is the most realistic and authentic version of yourself to help you meet new friends based on the same hobbies and interests you have. Let’s say you’re in a squad for basketball or hiking or yoga, and you want to show one of your dribble moves, or you want to show a new piece of gear you bought for hiking, or maybe just a cup of coffee that you’re drinking because you’re in a coffee squad. These are the types of things you can share with people in real time based on your life all through video. I haven’t seen any friendship apps that do that. Friendship apps are mostly boring, text and picture profiles. And there’s not a lot of interaction besides chatting. In Spinnr, it’s all about personality in your videos, Daily Spins, squads, and a whole lot more coming down the pipeline. Don’t forget we already have artificial intelligence in the app as well!

First and foremost, Spinnr members don’t  have the ability to like, follow, comment or share anything. We don’t have any of the types of interactions you find on social media platforms, because it’s not about that is it? We like to think our app is more about connecting with people, rather than watching content. When you want to meet someone new, you don’t want to like or share their video, or comment on their video or follow them. You want to add them as a friend. You want to interact with them as if you would in real life by sending them a video saying, “Hey! I saw your dog in your profile. I have a dog too. We should go to the dog park. Maybe we can grab a coffee!” Just as friends you know? It’s a friendship platform. So instead of interacting through pictures and posts and commenting and liking, we just want you to get to the exact moment when you interact with someone specifically to connect and create a friendship. The only way to do that is to eliminate the toxicity you find on social media and get to the root of the connection. This means engaging with video and audio messages along with text and photo messages of course, all in a way that encourages a healthy formation of a relationship to get to the next level of meeting in real life and feeling comfortable. And you don’t have to give out your phone number on Spinnr because you have every single option available to you. So Spinnr is a place where you can feel safe, secure, and not worry about all the toxic notifications you get on social media and instead, start creating authentic connections.

For years, I had to balance a hectic 12 to 16 hour work day, seven days a week with my personal life and work life. And I feel as though over the years, I’ve come to a great healthy balance. I incorporate mindfulness with meditation and yoga every single day. I take about three one mile walks, morning, afternoon and evening to get outside in nature. Breathe, listen to podcasts and music. Sometimes I’ll just meditate in the middle of the day after I have coffee or tea, and I’ll just relax. I like to hang out with my family and my friends. And of course take days off. As a filmmaker, I love watching movies and shows. So I do that at night when I have time. Anything that encourages artistic creativity, whether it’s going to a museum, listening to an orchestra, or finding somewhere fun to go, whether it’s traveling or being local, I just like to detach from work and also be mindful, which is very important for me to be present in the moment. As the saying goes, enjoy the journey, and not the destination. 

Leading a startup is challenging because you have a lot of moving parts. I might be testing the app with my development team, or coming up with new features and designing them, or figuring out how to introduce those features into the marketplace. Sometimes I have to come up with new marketing campaigns, video content, social media posts, and talk to the marketing team and coordinate schedules, and the list goes on and on. The truth is, without my amazing team, I wouldn’t be able to get things done. My co-founders Kristin LaSalle and Eric Raymond have my back no matter what, and we complement each other’s skills. In the end, the atmosphere we create is all about culture. And we exude positivity and creativity in spades. This means we encourage our team to come up with ideas on their own, show us what they’re thinking, and give us feedback. We also include them in our beta testing for the app. We have them creating flyers for events, and we have them coming up with ideas for comedy skits for video content or other social media content. We really have a team effort going and we don’t really have a system where any of us are better than each other. We have a great synergy where we’re all involved in the same projects in the same way. I constantly update everyone with behind the scenes information too. So what’s happening in development and how it ties into marketing is all part of our workflow and ecosystem. Also, we make sure everyone feels seen and heard. This is the most important part. To me personally, the idea of successful leadership is the ability to manage multiple different teams of any kind, while encouraging creativity, and fostering a team environment, so that nobody feels left out. Lastly, there always has to be some kind of organization in place where everything is moving smoothly, so that there are no kinks in the chain. At the end of the day, I look for organization, creativity, positivity, and a team effort. 

I’ve been creating apps and other products for years, such as films that I’ve made that have gone on to win multiple awards around the world, and are now globally distributed. Books that I’ve written, courses that I’ve created and taught, and my thriving podcast that has been around for five years now.

So I always have ideas for products and apps, whether or not I’m going to build them is another story because it is very time consuming and expensive. Right now I’m putting all of my effort into Spinnr. So if I do come up with something else in the future, it’s probably going to be a movie because I love making movies. I’ve been writing screenplays lately. And so I’ll be incorporating those into movies eventually. Although I come up with a lot of great script ideas, which I’m now incorporating into video content for Spinnr. So essentially, I’m kind of doing both at the same time. I am making my filmmaker side happy by making content for my tech side. My wish list really comes down to incorporating future thinking technologies such as artificial intelligence and machine learning languages, as well as becoming the biggest friendship platform in the world. We’ve already incorporated AI into our app by having a fun and friendly character named Spinny, who is your chat friend in the app. You can talk to him about anything. He can teach you a new language, or a new hobby, you can learn about topics you’re interested in, you can get help with your homework. The best part is you can just chat with him if you have depression or mental health issues, he can help you through it kind of like a therapist in a way, but not licensed of course, he’s AI. But we’re always thinking about the future. How can we make this app better? How can we incorporate certain technologies going forward? I’m always thinking about 5 to 10 years ahead, and I immediately add those things to the app. Our members are having a blast talking to Spinny. And that’s what we want. We want people to have a fun time when they’re on the app and feel like they have a friend. And although there are human friends on the app as well, having an artificial intelligence friend isn’t so bad either!

Well, this could be an entire interview all on its own. I teach this in my book, my course, and my podcast. It’s really about validating your concept, by not building anything. If you have an idea for an app, you want to validate it first by talking to 50 to 100 people, all of your friends and family, and find out what they think of the idea. You can draw some mock ups on a whiteboard, or simply with pen and paper, or in Photoshop if you have graphic skills. Show people how the app would work if you could build it. And just swipe through some screenshots on your phone and see what they think, get their feedback, feedback is key. From there, if you have validated your concept, you can also run some ads online, and see if people want to sign up to try your beta on an email landing page. From there, then you’d want to build an MVP, a minimum viable product. Most people want to build ten pages worth of a technical product, when essentially you really just need one or two main features that people can try to see how the app works. And then you can get feedback based on that. Ask them what kind of features they want to see next. We’ve been doing that with Spinnr since day one, we had an alpha launch, and then a beta. We finally launched privately, then we launched publicly, and we keep getting feedback back and forth, back and forth. Then we keep iterating. And adding different features that people are asking for. We think they’re good ideas, but we’re validating them because the market is telling us what they want. It’s not always about what you want. It’s about what the market wants, of course, you need to innovate, and add features that you believe are going to make the app or the product much better. And that’s where your creativity and your innovations will come in. But at the end of the day, the market is going to dictate what they do and don’t want. 

In five years from now, Spinnr will be the largest video platform for friends in the world. I want the gap in the market to be filled once and for all. Dating can have its lane, social media can have its lane, and friendship can land right here on Spinnr. Because there really is no place for people to meet new friends in an authentic, simple, and fun way. And so five years from now, I can just imagine either we are part of a larger company, or we are a large company. So if you’re looking for new friends, join us on Spinnr. We’re on iPhone and Android. And we’re constantly putting out new features that you’ll love!