Following our recent Q&As with the teams behind Ginsberg and the Innovation Labs, the FutureGov team sat down with Seun Oshinaike, co-founder of Silent Secret, to find out what his team has been up to since their participation to the Public Service Launchpad Accelerator.
Delivered by FutureGov and our friends at Solve, The Public Sector Launchpad Accelerator brought together 15 teams of social entrepreneurs and public sector innovators, all with ambitious projects at an early stage in their developments.
During 14 weeks, the teams benefited from an intensive startup support and seed investment, as well as access to experienced mentors and the wider networks of FutureGov and their partners.
Silent Secret was one of the teams that took part in the Accelerator, so we thought that this was the perfect time to find out what they’ve been up to since and the impact that being part of an accelerator programme has had on the success of the app.
What is Silent Secret?
Silent Secret is an anonymous app for teenagers to share their secrets, thoughts, news and lifestyle. For teenagers aged 11-19.
Why did you decide to build an app?
The co-founder Seun Oshinaike motivation to develop Silent Secret arose after being inspired by a TED Talks video by Frank Warren, the founder of postsecret.com.
“I was inspired by the video over 2 years ago and I set out to build a product that will use the power of secret sharing and social networking to empower teenagers in a fun and relevant way.”
Through research we realised that social media may have brought millions of teenagers together, but it has torn many others apart too. Once, bullies taunted their victims in the school playground; today they use smartphones to do so from afar. Media reports of “Facebook suicides” caused by cyberbullying are all too common.
Character assassination on Twitter is common, and other forms of e-torment. We saw a need to build an app that bridged the gap in providing a safe anonymous space for teenagers to share their feelings without fear of being cyberbullied, improving health and wellbeing of teenagers and connecting teenagers to support organisations. So we built it from bottom up with teenagers.
What impact has the Public Service Launchpad had for Silent Secret?
The Public Service Launchpad had a great impact on Silent Secret; it laid out the foundation for us to build and test early prototypes, test our assumptions, connect with mentors, accessing product design workshops, peer-to-peer support and seed investment. For us, one of the better outcomes of the Launchpad is the good relationship we have maintained with the team at FutureGov.
What does your app do that others’ don’t?
There are a number of anonymous apps available on the market, however almost all of these are focused on the adult audience.
The three most popular secret sharing apps: Whisper, Secret and Yik Yak are all rated as 17+ on Apple’s app store.
All three of these platforms, although anonymous, allow comments to be made and are therefore notorious for bullying and trolling; potentially increasing stress and anxiety and exacerbating mental health difficulties.
Silent Secret is different. It is rated on the app store as 12+ and its primary function is to support teenagers up to the age of 19 to share their feelings without being bullied and to connect teenagers to support organisations.
To eliminate the risk of online bullying and make Silent Secret safe, the app does not have the means for users to comment on each other’s secrets. Instead users are able to interact using these buttons: ‘heart’ to express love, ‘me2’ to express empathy, and ‘hug’ to express sympathy.
The app encourages a healthier form of interaction. A ‘get support’ button appears with each secret, enabling users to connect with support organisations should they need to.
Silent Secret is not just a safe, non-judgmental social network for teenagers; the app seamlessly captures each users health and wellbeing data anonymously every time a user shares a post, which contributes towards measuring the social wellbeing impact that Silent Secret is having on teenagers.
How were users involved in the design process?
Users were involved in the design process from the very foundation of Silent Secret. Our core team consists of fifteen young co-founders (now aged 14-18) who collectively own 15% of the company.
These young co-founders are the driving force behind the app from its design to its functionality and are at the heart of an all-round co-production within our team. Therefore the app is truly created by the people who it is designed for, it is a unique selling point for us and it allows us to capture and relate to the target users.
What has the user feedback been like?
It’s been remarkable and probably best if we quote some of them.
“I’m getting my life back on track! Thank you to everyone on this app, you have anonymously helped me without even realising, I love you all”
“Here is the only place I feel safe, No one knows you. No one can judge you. In a short space of time you feel content. At peace with your body and mind.”
“Really love this app, makes me feel like people actually care”
You can read more user feedback here. Before Silent Secret was launched in November 2014, over 900 teenagers had registered on our pre-sign up website. Four weeks after launch we had reached 1,000 users with 2,000 secrets shared and within eight weeks we had reached over 6,000 users with over 20,000 secrets shared.
Currently we have over 8,000 users and 28,000 secrets shared. Our active social network presence has increased significantly with over 8,000 Facebook likes. We are receiving several daily requests via comments and Facebook inbox for Android version of Silent Secret. We have had students independently presenting Silent Secret at school assemblies too.
What next for Silent Secret?
The future looks bright and exciting; we have secured a strategic partnership with UCL Partners Academic Health Science Network to support us in developing our approaches to evaluation and data analysis, part of our early discussion includes introducing artificial intelligence to support peer-to-peer advice for the users and using emoticons that represent the nine fundamental human emotions, to capture how teenagers feel after posting a secret.
The London Borough of Havering have invested in Silent Secret, this is a great partnership for us to further develop the product. We have a clear strategic plan of how we’ll scale Silent Secret, through a series of local launches across the UK and have already even begun to attract users from Australia, New Zealand, USA, Ireland.
We will continue to develop both the app and backend and secure more partnerships with local authorities and CCGs across the UK. We are in the process of forming our non-executive advisory board, which has confirmed membership from Joy Hollister Head of Children and Adult Services at Havering Council, Dr Anna Moore and Professor Peter Fonagy from UCL Partners.
More importantly, we want to focus on growing our user-base. As we grow a key risk is ensuring we have the technical infrastructure in place to cope with demand, hence we’ll strengthen our technical team.
We believe by providing a service that prevents the escalation of mental illness in teenagers we can offer significant savings to local authorities; evidence shows mental illness during childhood and adolescence results in UK costs between £11,030 and £59,130 annually per child.
Thanks to Sean for taking the time to answer our questions. The Silent Secret team are seeking investment to build the infrastructure to keep up with their demand. Head to the Silent Secret website to find out more or if you’d like to support them.