Why Pepper Will Be A $1B Vertical Social Platform
Via OPPEIN
You’ve probably heard the saying, “You are the average of the 5 people you spend the most time with.”
Well, it’s the truth. Your friends, your family, your colleagues. Whoever you spend the most time with, you end up adopting similar attitudes, goals, and habits.
Trying to decide what restaurant to go to? You probably write in a group chat with your friends & ask where they’ve gone recently.
Trying to decide where to go on your next vacation? You probably ask your closest friends or family their favorite places.
Trying to decide what to cook? What DO you normally do?
Text your friends? Check Google? Tweet “What should I cook tonight?” Use a recipe app with professional chefs that leaves you thinking, “there’s no way I could ever make this…”
What is a vertical social network?
According to Forbes, “a vertical social network is a specifically targeted social network that connects people with very specific interests, hobbies, and passions. In other words, it is a network that caters to a certain category of users who are interested in sharing content and connecting with others over their shared interests.”
Over the last ~5 years, we’ve seen the massive success of vertical social platforms and the powerful effect they have on driving positive habits and community.
It’s not surprising former early stage consumer investor Justine Moore of CRV wrote an article titled, “The next $1B consumer startup will be a vertical social network — here’s why.”
Goodreads (sold to Amazon) is a social network around reading. You can easily track what you’ve read, give reviews on what you’ve read, and see what others you know are reading.
Strava (a $1B consumer startup) is a social network around exercise. It gives you the tools to not only document your own fitness journey, but also be inspired by to exercise more by seeing your friends’ fitness activity.
AllTrails is a social network around outdoor recreational activities. Same concept as Strava & Goodreads.
Pepper is a social network around cooking. Pepper gives you the tools to create a digital cookbook, search for dishes and recipes by ingredients, dietary restrictions, and more. Users can easily browse dishes and recipes from people you know. Future functions include well… you’ll have to download to find out :)
Why Pepper will be a $1B vertical social network
After noticing the success of platforms like Strava and Goodreads, I kept wondering: “How is there no vertical social platform for the one thing nearly every person in the world has in common, eating food?”
Pepper is quickly becoming the go-to platform for users interested in sharing cooking content and connecting with others over their shared interest in food.
Other reasons include the fact everybody eats (large TAM), a high majority of meals are made at home (large TAM), and basically everyone in the world faces two (huge) problems:
Deciding what to eat (for many, cook) today?
Cooking the same thing over & over due to lack of inspiration
It was always mind boggling to me how despite the thousands of recipe apps, food blogs, and food content on social networks, I still saw my friends writing in group texts, “Anyone have a good idea for what I should cook tonight?” There was clearly a disconnect between the platforms being offered and the solutions the world needed.
Pepper makes sense as the next evolution of vertical social platforms.
We are at the forefront of the social cooking movement, and we have a team set on solving the massive problem we all face: What am I going to eat today?
Pepper is the solution by connecting you to dishes and recipes familiar to you.
Join us on this journey, and check out Pepper on the iOS App Store today.