Howbout, a London-based startup that makes it easier for groups of friends to make plans, has raised a total of £1.92 million from investors including ACF Investors, Supernode Global, Boost Capital, and angel investors Claire Valoti (senior advisor Snap Inc.) and Desigan Chinniah (ex-Paypal and Skype).

Howbout is a social planning app that lets friends instantly find when they’re all free using smart time matching, polls or calendar sharing from which they can then easily create plans. Users can see all their different plans with all their different friendship groups in one place. Howbout already has more than 500,000 downloads to date and users in 125+ countries have made more than 3 million plans on it since its launch in August 2020. 100,000 plans now get made weekly on the app.

The app was co-founded by CEO Neil Tanna, a former corporate lawyer who came up with the idea when struggling to organise plans with friends post-university. Co-founders include CFO Jake Jenner, a former investment banker, and CTO Duncan Cowan, a software and electrical systems engineer.

Neil Tanna, Co-founder, and CEO, comments: “Let’s face it - making plans with friends can be draining. The faff of finding a time that works for everyone and then agreeing what you’re doing and where you’re doing it usually stops the majority of plans from happening.

“Being spontaneous is really hard. Howbout works to make it really easy to go from planning to plan- made. It’s been an awesome start: we’ve seen really exciting growth since we launched and the feedback has been great.. This investment is a massive boost for our plans to expand to new markets and improve our tech even more.”

Howbout is part of a growing trend towards ‘dark’ social media, along with apps such as BeReal and Discord. This wave of challenger brands prioritise private connections and closed networks as opposed to social media giants such as Facebook and Twitter, which default to public profiles.

The funding will be used to support the app’s global expansion, hire new personnel and invest in research and development.

Tim Mills, Managing Partner at ACF Investors said “Howbout’s organic global growth is a testament to how much value users are getting out of this app. The existing social media giants are so often in the headlines - rarely for a good reason - that we forget that this is an area that is actually ripe for innovation.

“We’re seeing users turn away from public forum environments and towards more private, more thoughtfully curated spaces that are full of people they care about. With Gen Z particularly enthusiastic about this new wave of social, it’s a very exciting time, and Howbout has a fantastic chance of being a major success story.”