The French and the English Who Help You Find Out What to Do in Milan
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The French and the English Who Help You Find Out What to Do in Milan

CHLOE' CABANTOUS AND LUKE ROBINSON, TWO RECENT GRADUATES FROM BOCCONI, ARE LAUNCHING HAPPNOW, AN APP TO FIND AND SHARE THE BEST EVENTS IN TOWN

Dressed to kill but nowhere to go – or not in the mood to coordinate a search through multiple sources and multiple devices, as frequently happens to students planning a group night out. Something similar must have also happened to Chloé Cabantous and Luke Robinson, a French and an English 2014 BIEMF graduates, during their years at Bocconi, if they decided to launch happnow, an app to find and share the best events in town.
 
Users, as well as event managers or local businesses, can promote their events by presenting their descriptions in the app to be viewed, shared and commented on by other users.
 
The app, available in the App store in English, Italian and French, has been officially launched on 19 March with a party at 11 Clubroom in Milan.
 
Luke, who still lives in Milan, and Chloé, who moved to Paris, have been refining their idea for the last year making an intensive use of technology, “and namely the screen sharing feature of Skype”, they recall with a smile. In the last weeks, however, Chloé reached Luke in Milan to manage the launch of the app.
 
Chloé’s parents manage a furniture family business and she had been to Milan for the Salone del Mobile (the furniture trade fair) at least ten times before deciding to attend Bocconi. Luke, who studied in Singapore and the UK, followed the advice of a high school Italian classmate and visited Bocconi before taking the decision to enroll.
 
An entrepreneurial venture was in the plans of both of them since their teen years and they independently singled out the spare time planning need as a business opportunity. “After some hints we decided to talk about our idea in a quiet place, without interruptions by roommates and friends and we met at Mag Café in February 2014”, they recall.
 
Since then they’ve been working first on the development of the business plan and then on the design of the app and the search for suppliers and the product is continuously improving (“the last feature we added is the possibility of sharing through WhatsApp”, Luke says). “We’ve worked together on everything”, Chloé adds, “because we want to have a view on all the business and because we are of a similar mindset”.
 
Chloé and Luke have put their own money into the venture and are launching the app in Milan because they know it well (“events happen all the time and the students and citizens are always looking for the next one“, they say), because the town is vibrant, but not too large to be managed, and because in the year of EXPO 2015 demand for events of any kind (“the app is not only about nights out!”) is destined to rise and a lot of people will be in search of a single source of information about what happens in town. In the future, however, they want to launch happnow in other towns.

by Fabio Todesco

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