The one drawback to this is that the app uses Bluetooth to function, which could drain your battery. Everyone else in the room can connect with that person/party by physically knocking on their closed and locked smartphone screen to be added to the group. The app also includes a group knocking function. This is a feature Jain worked into Humin but has a real application for event-based meetings meant for an app like Knock Knock. The app also helps users remember the names of those they met and where they met. “It takes the awkwardness out of social interactions. “They’ll never know you shared more with others in the group,” Jain said. If you don’t want to share your contact info but don’t want to look rude, you can just share partial information with certain people. Users can then connect with one another and chat just using the app, or they can choose to share their email, cell phone, Snapchat and other social profiles with the rest of the group. The app then searches on a mesh network for those close to them also using the app. Students connect with each other on the Knock Knock network by knocking twice to open the app. That might seem obtrusive, but Jain affirmed that the students can unsubscribe to the messages and noted that invites and info through the app can help these organizations cut through the noise of email. “The frat can then message that group with special invites for any upcoming parties or events and easily reach out to people for things like Rush,” Jain told TechCrunch. Knock Knock uses Beacon technology set up within certain fraternity and sorority houses at these schools so students attending a party at one of the houses or are looking to pledge can easily connect with those they met at the event and stay in touch later. These include Harvard, Cornell, the University of Pennsylvania, Stanford, Berkeley, and the University of Southern California. Jain and his team selected certain colleges that tend to have intellectual influence on the world. He has another strategy to roll the app out on campus. These students hold influential positions at their colleges and beyond and Jain is in a position to encourage these young and upwardly mobile folks to use the app. Ankur JainĪdd to it that Jain is the founder of the Kairos Society – an organization that looks for and recruits some of the most talented and entrepreneurial minds under 25 – many of them hail from Ivy League schools.
It takes the awkwardness out of social interactions. All of that seems enough to at least give the app a shot. Sir Richard Branson, Will.i.am and Sophia Bush invested in Knock Knock and appear in an ad to show how the app works (head to the end of this article to see the video). He’s also pulled in some celeb-infused endorsements for Knock Knock. He watched his father run corporations from grade school up. Jain is the son of tech billionaire and InfoSpace founder Naveen Jain. But Jain is optimistic about Knock Knock’s collegiate future. Bump, an app that let users bump each other’s phones to exchange photos and get contact info, is another that is no more. Many of these types of apps also don’t make it. LinkedIn has a contacts app called Connected. has an iOS app called Intro for quickly exchanging contact info, GroupMe took care of the conversational part of things by setting up group chats. Lots of apps have tried to do this before. We created Knock Knock as a fun solution that takes the pressure off when navigating these situations, utilizing technology that mirrors our real-life social habits.” “Thinking back to my first week of college, I remember wishing there was a way to keep track and remember all of the new people I met. “New social encounters can be both awkward and intimidating,” Jain said. Jain plans to market this new app as a way for college kids to make connections without the awkwardness around immediately sharing contact info. His first app is meant to intrinsically understand the way you use contacts in your phone, whereas Knock Knock is based on connecting with and remembering those you meet at various events. Knock Knock is something Jain has been working on as a side project to his main startup Humin.
Two strong thumps to the glass screen and a comic book styled app called Knock Knock opens up and begins to search for other users around us. Ankur Jain, the founder of Humin – an app that aims to organize your contacts better than your smartphone – is sitting across from me in a conference room in downtown San Francisco and knocking on his own smartphone.