Our Story

The concept for Grouped was born out of the personal experiences of Grouped Co-founders, Finn Hodgins and Claire Nolan.

Claire built a following of over 100k on social media, which is where the idea sparked. She was frustrated that only a small percent of her audience actually saw the content she created, and although her overall engagement and views were high, she struggled to engage the people who actually followed her.

Claire wanted to create an online community where she could build closer relationships with the people who followed her, and have a chance to convert them into customers. She knew this was nearly impossible on existing social platforms because she did not have the full attention of her audience, and algorithms interfered, making it difficult to create a true community.

Claire told her Co-founder, Finn Hodgins, who worked in e-commerce and had seen first hand how the evolution of social media platforms made them in-effective for DTC brands to create communities and drive sales. Through his experience, Finn knew that brands who created strong, private online communities made significantly more sales, but the old platforms they created these communities on were failing.  

The problem was, there wasn’t a platform that gave brands complete control and ownership of their audience, where they could directly communicate with their customers without distractions, while still being interactive and convenient for the customer, like social media.

Finn and Claire knew how many brands shared the same frustrations, and were excited to create a solution that actually allowed leaders to build strong customer relationships and convert their audience into sales.

To learn more about our experiences that lead us to creating Grouped, check out our blog.