We're changing the way students all over the U.S. connect
(all because we stumbled accross something people want)

Our youth has been aching for a way to connect that's just for them, so we decided to try to and give them one
(by creating a joke Twitter account)

1 MONTH LATER WE HAD:
10,000+ followers
TODAY WE HAVE: (with zero dollars spent on marketing)
450,000 followers
10,000 schools reached
60,000 interactions per day
65M+ people reached per month

...good thing this is something we’re passionate about.

MEET THE TEAM

We’re lean, fast, and well balanced.

Franco Iudiciani Co-Founder, Marketing & Operations Lead

7 yrs experience in publication editing, marketing, & social media

Founder, FranklyComposed.com, a multi-national online essay editing service for high-school and college students

Harvard College, 2016

Giuseppe Stuto Co-Founder, Business Lead

4yrs tech startup mgmt. experience

BUILD Mentor to dozens of high-school kids, intimate understanding of market needs.

Previous co-founder of Auctus Partners, web development & design shop that’s worked with numerous early stage startups, one of which was acquired.

Boston University, 2011

Justin McManus Tech Lead

13 yrs web, 7yrs mobile dev experience

Founder at Velociraster

Emphasis on RoR, Erlang, Python, Java, objC, and HTML5. Physics & data scientist aficionado

Community Leaders

Anthony Lopez High School Community Lead

5 yrs FPS amateur QA tester
2 yrs social media scaling experience
Avid outdoors adventurer

Sal Listro College Community Lead

6 yrs entertainment social media experience
Viral growth content creator

Our Advisors

Marco Buchbinder Biz & Strategy

Global Head New Biz Dev EMC,
Former advisor to Glancee, Storability, Advanced Solutions

Brian Goss Operations & Team Building

Founder/CEO DoneBox, previously Founder/CEO Onsite- acquired by Rovion, CTO PointRoll—acquired by Gannett

Anshuman SharmaTechnical

Co-Founder/CTO Ubiqi Health,
11 years R&D with mobile

Victor Mathieux Design & Product

Founder/CPO, Everest.com and Dept. of Motivation

THE OPPORTUNITY

From 2011-2014, Facebook lost 58% of it’s users in the 12-18 demographic
Teens feel like Facebook isn’t for them, yet they still want a place to connect

TEENAGERS WANT:

Cool factor
A feeling of inclusion
Freedom of expression without judgement
Real-time dialogue (which in school means mobile)

Something just for them…

SMACK HIGH PROVIDES ALL OF THE ABOVE

Bust most importantly, it’s the only place
that’s JUST for high-school student

MARKET SIZE

This is a big market…

17M
high-school students in U.S.A.
500M
high-school students world-wide
$258.7B
spent by teens each year in the U.S.A

Advertisters dream of getting better access to our demographic. The tight-knit networks of teens lead to hyper virality and reach.

Most brands have few channels, if any, where they can connect with teens at their passion points when they are most engaged, Smack High provides this.

$4.5B
digital ad-spend targeting teens every year in U.S.A.

CURRENT PRODUCT

We started by simply giving students a place to
connect via Twitter and they loved it:






Next, we decided to make a really basic app with almost no functionality just to see if people would use it…

Our app enables students to post publicly or anonymously

Public posts allow students to share things they think are funny, interesting, cool, inspiring, news-worthy, etc…

Anonymous posts allow students to share meaningful things without fear of being judged

School-specific filters make it easy for students to engage with what’s actually relevant to them

This is important because students feel that networks like Twitter & Instagram are too broad

These posts create content that’s surprisingly engaging

Most-smacked posts appear higher up on "Top" stream, while students browse content across their schools, states, or nation.

Turns out teens have a lot to connect over…

This app receives solid engagement levels today, despite its limited functionality (e.g. students can’t even reply to each other yet). If you’d like to see our numbers, please get in touch

WHAT’S NEXT

Our Twitter traction speaks for itself,
but now it’s time to tackle bigger plans:

PRODUCT IMPROVEMENTS ON THE WAY:(engagement first, then growth)
  • Photo Sharing

    By far one of our most requested features which has been proven to significanty boost engagement in social networks

    VALIDATED
  • Micro-Communities

    We’ve come up with a low-friction way to enable students to create their own micro-communities (hint: using hashtags)

    VALIDATED
  • Notifications

    Social notifications are notorious for creating engagement loops that keep users coming back for more

    VALIDATED
  • Features we’re testing:

    We’re also currently looking into:
    - Creative video capture
    - Direct messaging
    - Reward system

    TO BE TESTED
GROWTH STREATGY:(we heard investors like hockeystick graphs)
  • Widen availability of app

    So far we’ve limited the availability of the app to 9 states, but we have Community Leaders at over 2,000 schools and everything is in place to expand once school starts

    READY
  • Launch in existing schools

    SmackHigh Twitter has adoption in 7,800 schools… with a couple strategic steps we should be able to expand our presence to many of them by the end of the year

    IN PROGRESS
  • Expand to all U.S. schools

    There are over 32,000 high schools in the U.S. We’ve already started our list building efforts to get Community Leaders at all of them

    IN PROGRESS
  • Expand internationally

    There are over 500M high-school students world-wide. We can use the same tactics as in the U.S. to grow world wide

    NEXT: College kids :)

… a lot of people already want what we’re making…

We’re seeking the right investors to help us make the most of this opportunity.

GET IN TOUCH Want more information? Please email giuseppe@smackhigh.com