For Farbod Jamali, it was all about creating community.
Jamali grew up in a small town in Iran, and he said that getting to know your neighbours was ingrained in the culture.
When he moved to Canada 10 years ago, he chose an apartment building that had 70 per cent newcomers.
“Unfortunately, in a short time, I realized this apartment building just offered a hyper-individualized lifestyle to its residents, and the residents of apartment buildings are just locked in box-shaped houses isolated from the community,” he said.
“It’s hard for a newcomer like me to settle down in a country that I just came to when my housing is isolated.”
During COVID, it was particularly difficult for neighbours to connect or even to communicate. Even in apartment buildings, Jamali said. What’s more, it created a big challenge for local businesses to reach customers as well.
That’s when he developed Weciny.
“I created Weciny for that purpose. Weciny is a very easy-to-use solution that helps with almost all of these problems. So, we’ve helped apartment building residents to create a community in their building. It’s private, it’s safe,” he said.
“We’ve also created an e-commerce platform for local businesses, where they can create their online store, and they can pick and select apartment buildings around them and start doing marketing there.”
Safety and privacy are critical aspects, so any prospective sign-ups have to get an access code to confirm they are a part of a specific apartment building, Jamali said. From there, people can join their apartment building’s community.
In many ways, it operates like a typical social network with a feed system. It includes neighbours that you can message and a marketplace. Jamali said one of the most-used features is neighbour creating private groups for things like biking or yoga, or even badminton.
Understanding a market’s culture
Jamali said one of the things he wanted to get from the Alberta Catalyzer Velocity program was a better understanding of Calgary – and Canada. Learning the culture and integrating that into a business was a key for him to move forward.
After that, it was important for him to get access to the startup ecosystem in Calgary.
“As a founder… you need to do everything in the beginning. You need to build the product. You need to present your business. You need to raise money. You need to know the market. You need to know the legal side of the business,” he said.
“So, this is very complicated knowledge that it’s not possible for founders in a startup to have. Overall, the Velocity program is just helping us with everything that we need.”
Jamali said the mission is to create a community in every apartment building in Canada and the United States, and beyond.
“We want to be in more buildings. We want to be more cities. We want to be in many countries,” he said.
“At the same time, we want to build a very trusted community platform for our residents.”
