“Qoorio brings a structured and safe way for humans to connect and learn from each other in the most natural way – conversation,” – says Justas Janauskas, the CEO and Co-founder of Qoorio. This week “Startup of the week” presents Lithuanian startup launched in 2019 – Qoorio.  In this interview, Justas Janauskas shares more about the idea and ambitious advantages of the startup.

So what is Qoorio? How does it work? 

Qoorio is a network of people who learn from each other. Practically Qoorio allows users to find other Qoorio users with specific knowledge & experience and arrange a conversation to talk about a topic of their interest. 

Topics are limited only by the human imagination and you can find people to learn from about many things including the secrets of the cosmos, real estate markets, traveling to Angola, building corporations, investing in cryptos and more.

Download the app, search through thousands of topics and individuals, connect with other users, meet them for coffee, chat online or arrange a phone call and learn from them.

What are your competitors and competitive advantages?

Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter – we can describe them as networks of people. However, their purpose is different from knowledge sharing through conversations with other users. 

Google, Youtube, Wikipedia – they are all information and knowledge databases, though, they are not designed to enable interactive human conversations.

We can assume that Qoorio is a combination of both – a network of people with a purpose to share knowledge & experience through conversations with other users.

What were the reasons behind coming up with this idea and launching this product? 

The idea emerged from the realization of the importance of lifelong learning. Both of me and my co-founder have experienced that the best way to learn is from other humans with different experiences and backgrounds.

While social networks promised to connect people, they have stolen a significant amount of our valuable time as we scroll through feeds, liking photos and watching ads. We are social animals, we grow as human beings by observing behaviors, listening and interacting with other human beings, not devices. 

Qoorio brings a structured and safe way for humans to connect again and learn from each other in the most natural way – conversation.

When exactly did you launch, what were the main challenges before launching?

We launched in June 2019. The main challenges were to assemble a team that could build a great MVP and onboard our initial users. 

Who are your target customers? Both in terms of user profile and geography?

In terms of geography, we launched in Lithuania back in June 2019. We then expanded our geographical focus to Europe in November 2019, with the UK being our primary target.

In terms of profiles, we have two groups – open and curious humans. Open humans are people who have accumulated knowledge in particular areas and are willing to share it with other community members. Curious humans – are people who are looking for individuals with specific knowledge & experience.

What are the main challenges while working on this product and how are you overcoming them?

Since Qoorio is such a novel concept, the main challenge is explaining our idea to the market, as well as showing how valuable conversations with other Qoorio users are. 

How are you funded? Do you seek extra funding?

In 2019 we closed our pre-seed and seed investment rounds, totaling €2.54m. At the moment we aren’t seeking extra funding.

Please introduce your founders, your core team and your broader team?

Gabija Grušaitė and I are the founders of Qoorio. Before Qoorio, Gabija lived in Malaysia for 7 years running a private art center. She has also published two critically acclaimed novels. I ran my first company, a C2C marketplace for second-hand fashion called Vinted.

Qoorio was the brainchild of our two different worlds, and so we decided to leave our previous ventures and create something new and interesting.

Today Qoorio is a team of 16 people: 9 working in product, 3 in marketing, 2 in operations and Gabija and I as founders.

How has business been so far? Could you share some numbers to illustrate this (users, sales, etc)?

The business is doing very well. On our app, we have 30,000 users, 5,000 topics and 2,000 individuals ready to share their knowledge. The numbers are growing every day.

Future plans, ambitions? Simply speaking – what’s next?

We are hoping for more interesting and curious humans participating in our community and better product experience with various topics, more meetings, and happy users overall.

Thank you for the interview!

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