For many students arriving at Cambridge, whether for the first time or the last, Freshers’ Week induces both anticipation and uncertainty. Amid the tidal wave of society fairs, career events, and a wide-ranging social scene, it’s easy to become overwhelmed at the prospect of finding a passion to take beyond university, or making lasting friendships despite the superficiality of social media. For Georgia Gibson and Omar Lingemann, co-founders of the Youni app, these questions compelled them to return to campus as graduates. Catching them in their East London office space as they dash through a country-wide tour of Freshers’ Weeks, I chatted to them about their social media platform designed to drag uni students back into real life.
“I felt a bit annoyed, really,” Omar tells me about his experience at Oxford University; “there I was at one of the best universities in the world – in theory, apart from Cambridge – so aware of all these incredible opportunities that are around you, but with no one space to tap into them”. Already realising he did not want to use his Law degree to become a lawyer, Omar struggled to discover his passion amid a disorganised societies scene. Also at Oxford, Georgia found that Facebook and Instagram were unfit for promoting her many extracurricular events, and a solution was sparked. Meeting Omar at Entrepreneur Society and discovering they were both dreaming up the ultimate events app, she decided “if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em” – and the rest was history. “We are the user, we get it: we want to build the product that we think should have been built for us,” they tell me, and so in October 2023, they launched Youni in Oxford with the aim of fulfilling that goal.
“We are the user, we get it: we want to build the product that we think should have been built for us”
“The university system is broken,” Youni’s Instagram page declares. Behind it lies the co-founders’ frustration that you can get a “fancy degree from a fancy university”, yet still not find what you really want to do. Amid a “downward trajectory” of extracurricular involvement stemming from a “lack of centralised data points about communities at universities”, they explain that their app is about “giving young people the access and choice”. While some freshers arrive already understanding the society and collegiate system, with eyes set on certain extracurriculars, many don’t. By enabling them to see which groups they might join and speak to the people behind them, Youni aims to alleviate anxiety prior to arrival, give freshers the space to find their people, and help them envision how they might fit into university life. Georgia believes that digitalising the overwhelming “one tent experience” of Freshers’ Fair is a small but important move. “It’s a sensory overload,” Omar explains. “If you’re someone who has slight social anxiety […] it’s designed to torment you!” Instead, their app is curated to let you “tap into” that huge range of choice, from wherever you are.
Although its launch was stalled by one (quite socially-impacting) event, the pandemic, this only motivated the co-founders more: “COVID just was a massive proof exercise in that social media was definitely not social anymore,” Georgia tells me. Proving “there was a gap in the market for a platform that was actually truly making you feel social”, it made the public realise that, “no matter how technologically enhanced our lives get, in real life connection is the only thing we can be sure of that’s gonna be consistent […] And that is something that we built this company off: the idea that people want to find their people.”
“That is something that we built this company off: the idea that people want to find their people”
It’s no surprise then that Georgia took a 10-year hiatus from social media just as most of her friends were getting hooked, when she suddenly realised her own “unhealthy obsession with measuring yourself on metrics that are really reserved for adverts”. While maybe missing out in the short term, staying offline seems to have eventually led her to her true passion. “I had to find a way to sustain my social life without social media. And the way that I did that was trying to find the best ways to connect people in real life.” This culminated in her “constantly curating events” from holidays to DJ nights, until finally building “an event-based social network”.
Yet, recalling how dominated my own Freshers’ Week was by the exchange of Instagrams, followed by maintaining purely perfunctory relationships with hundreds of people, I question whether they’ve struggled to make Youni’s anti-social media messaging stick. I’m told it’s not a “blanket ban”; instead, they’re striving “to set a new industry standard” for social media companies to “think about their mental health footprint in the way that big factories think about their carbon footprint.” Omar emphasises young people’s responsiveness to their mission – one “increasingly important” in today’s divisive society dominated by the “single-player, algorithm-driven, glorified ad board” of online platforms. With a business model reliant on maximising our screen time, social media has finally frustrated Gen Z. “It’s trying to be controversial, it’s trying to divide. It’s trying to keep you single-player. We want to bring people back together,” he tells me.
So this is where Youni comes in; instead of isolating us, it aims to use tech to our advantage. The app’s feed, which Georgia describes as a “Skyscanner for events”, lists all the events happening in your community, pulled from public databases by AI-enhanced aggregator tools. “It’s a bit of a buzzword,” Omar acknowledges when I enquire about their use of (the ever-controversial) AI. He explains the technology is merely a means to “minimise online time to maximise offline time”, preventing them manually sourcing event information from individual sites. “One of the biggest frustrations that people feel about social media […] is just this lack of transparency,” he notes. They assure me that clarity about their process is a priority, explaining how their app clearly shows when AI is used, while the requirement for a Cambridge email to access community posts increases privacy.
Such transparency is traceable in their Instagram page, full of energised yet authentic videos of them and their friends, and I ask why simply showing themselves as flawed young adults is so important. “The benefit of young people seeing it and being like, ‘Oh my God, that’s an immigrant boy and a gay girl, look at what they’re doing! ’” is invaluable, Georgia tells me. “Be what you can’t see. And maybe people are more likely to think that they could do it too.”
“Be what you can’t see. And maybe people are more likely to think that they could do it too”
Spending hundreds of hours travelling to meet all the societies they are working with, their refusal to hide behind a brand is also the fuel for their universities tour. “I always wanted to sell the app by selling activity and inspiring people to go out,” Georgia affirms. “In this whole process, I haven’t sent a single email to a society.” An impressive feat – although, as Oxford, Cambridge and Durham’s Freshers’ Weeks coincide, they’re “going to have to be in three places at once!”
Amazed by their stamina, I turn to their imminent arrival at Cambridge’s Freshers’ Week, tentatively asking whether they can reveal anything they’ve got in store for the incoming cohort. Georgia grins at the chance to reveal some plans. “We are lucky to be working with some really incredible societies already. We’ve been posted on the feeds of Cambridge Women in Business, Cambridge ACS, Gender Agenda. We’re also working with the Cambridge Freshers 2024 account, and we’re going to be doing some events in Freshers’ Week. So stay tuned, because you’re going to be able to get tickets on Youni for those.” Working with freps, ticket reps, and DJ collectives like Slipped Disc, they’re above all just excited to “get into the ecosystem”.
They know they don’t have all the answers though, and assure me that they’ve had to fail and start again “a billion times”; “right now we’re starting at Cambridge, we’ll see how that goes! ,” Georgia smiles. While the fear of starting Fresher’s Week for the first or final time is currently striking the hearts of many students, the hope for these graduates is that the club nights, freebies and fairs never stop, as they strive to bring their vision of a new university experience to life across the country. And in Cambridge, alongside their app’s offers of free tickets, Georgia and Omar are simply bringing an eagerness to get stuck into the city. “Come say hi,” Georgia says, “because I just want to make friends!”
