Social App Connects Students KEEN on Discovering Shared Interests
Media release: for May 28, 2014
Helping a global community of 150 million students meet around shared interests is the mission of digital startup KEEN.
After struggling to find friends to join him in casual games of tennis, founder Peter Chen started developing a program
to connect him with others looking to play. That program grew into smartphone app KEEN, which connects near-by users
based on activity and interest.
With KEEN, users create spontaneous activities, anything from grabbing a coffee to a game of football, which other
like-minded users browse by hashtag and decide if they are “keen” to meet. It is available to students at participating
universities on both Android and iOS.
“We are bridging the gap between online and offline social interaction by creating an easier way for users with shared
interests to meet up in real-life,” says Chen. “We want to build a social tool that helps bring online social behaviour
back into the real world.”
KEEN has received considerable traction after launching at Otago University early in 2014 and is poised for expanding
into eight new universities across New Zealand and Australia in June. Going forward, KEEN’s looking to the United
Kingdom as the next market, where it is already in talks with universities.
A participant in digital startup accelerator program Lightning Lab, KEEN has spent the past three months refining its
business plan for international expansion, building its team and improving the product based on market feedback.
“Our daily active user ratio is very encouraging, and traffic is only going up” says Chen. “We can’t wait to see what
students overseas do with it.”