19-year-old entrepreneur Cory Levy is trying to solve a problem. He believes that we miss millions of opportunities to meet like-minded people because we don’t have any knowledge of the people around us. There could be people within feet of you at a coffee shop, office building or bar who share friends, interests and professional connections, but we may never realize this in the physical world. To fix this, Levy wants to give people knowledge of who and what is around us. Today, Levy and his co-founder Michael Callahan are debuting One, a mobile app that notifies you when there are people around you that share your interests.
One already has an all-star group of backers, who have put over $1 million in seed funding in the startup. Investors include SV Angel, Keith Rabois, Gary Vaynerchuk, Naval Ravikant, Michael Dearing,
True Ventures, Charles River Ventures, and General Catalyst.
The best way to visualize One, which will launch an iOS app in the Fall, is that the app is a way to ask the people right next to you thousands of questions and get notified if they answer yes enough times. When you sign into the app, your interests and information is pulled from Facebook (and you can manually , and the app will track your location to determine who matches your interests nearby who have also downloaded One.
Levy explains to me that the startup is launching on college campuses as a way for students to meet each other in a close proximity. Currently, it looks like One may make its initial debut at UC Berkeley this Fall.
The idea behind One could be compelling in certain setting like college campuses or even conferences. Levy says he plans to expand the app to Android as well as will create a web presence as well.
Aside from One, Levy’s background is impressive for a 19-year-old. Prior to One, he started several companies including an educational startup, a t-shirt printing company, and a sports memorabilia company. He was only 14 when he founded his first startup.