Oliver Fritz is the co-founder of Froodini - a revolutionary web app that helps get-together organizers sort out who’s bringing what more painlessly than ever before.

But back in 2017 - not that long ago - Oliver had never even thought about founding a startup to help make part planning breezier; “I just didn’t see the need for something like this before.

”Why not?“

"I guess I just assumed the right solution was out there. I’d used Doodle polls for other things like voting on meeting times and had found it mostly adequate for basic stuff like that.”So what changed?“

"I was celebrating my thirtieth birthday and decided to invite a few close friends around for a barbecue. Of course, this was way before Covid so the only things we really had to worry about were questions like, ‘Who’s gonna bring which food? Who’ll bring drinks? Those issues we’ve all spent the last year wishing we could get back to!”

At this point, Jakub notes his own stereotypical German-ness.

“We went with a Mexican theme. I don’t know about you, but I love Mexican food.I spent over two hours researching different ideas for food and drinks people could bring along. Stuff that went beyond the obvious, you know? Better than bad store-bought fajita kits. So I really went all in on the research and organization. I know what you’re thinking, ‘Typical German!’"

We weren’t going to be the ones to say it.

Oscar goes on, “Once I’d put a list of items people could bring along it was time to find an efficient way for people to choose which they wanted to bring and keep track of that.

”So what did he do?“

"I went with the solution I’d used before for really simple stuff; I did a Doodle poll. And the event turned out really well - the problem was not the end result.”

So what was the problem?

“It took hours! I obviously had to populate the entire list myself. It may not sound too bad, but honestly, for anything but a tiny event with very few options, it does take a long time. It’s the kind of thing you don’t realise until you do it. So add that to the time spent on research; it was a big time commitment. Parties are supposed to be fun, you know?”

So how exactly does Froodini solve that?

“There are a couple of really big benefits to Froodini versus other solutions. For one, there are pre-created lists. Kinda like templates you can choose from. So if you’re having a particular theme - say a Mexican event like I was - you can just pick that option and you have a list of items ready to go!”

“You can customize it further if you like, but the premade lists are a huge time saver. It’s also a great starting point for ideas if you’re not sure what style event / party you want to create.

”What else?“

"With Froodini you can see what everyone else has chosen to bring if you’re an attendee. Most small survey platforms aimed at consumers are focused on getting an answer to a single question like ‘When shall we have the meeting?’ with votes intentionally anonymous. There’s a pretty good reason behind that. Disagreement can be contentious and hiding the differences between how people voted from one another can prevent conflict.”

“But that doesn’t really apply to situations like event planning where people are trying to collaborate rather than manage disagreement. As an attendee of someone’s barbecue, it’s helpful to me to see what you’re bringing along if you’re coming to the party, too.”

“If you’re already bringing French fries, I don’t wanna bring fries too if nobody has agreed to supply the hotdogs yet, for example.”

“At Froodini, our guiding principles are also the three elements of our slogan; foods, friends, magic. I.e. bring those things together and it should be that easy. Beyond those two benefits (the premade lists and the ability to see other people’s selections) it’s also just a nicer UI / UX. The items are well organized and they’re searchable. It’s a step up.

”So where did Develocraft come in?

Oscar was pretty committed to the idea of making Froodini a progressive web app from early on:

“With a progressive web application, the user doesn’t have to download anything. When you’re organizing something like a party and you can’t guarantee every person attending will want to download something to their device, that’s a big plus.”

Develocraft had the skills to do just that; create a progressive web application from scratch. “When Anton approached me I was a little hesitant at first. You get approached by a lot of developers. There are so many out there and it can be hard to sort the serious development agencies from the ones that probably aren’t worth your time.”

“But after talking to Anton - who I believe is actually the director of growth at Develocraft - I really could see the depth of knowledge and engagement there was really impressive.”

Oscar goes on, “If you ever need someone to testify about the quality of Develocraft’s work on Flutter, Dart, and Firebase, I’m happy to do so. That’s the tech stack used for developing Froodini which has gone from just an idea to a fully functioning application.”