Brand matchmaking platform Collabosaurus teams up with General Assembly for app launch

Brand matchmaking platform Collabosaurus is following up its strongest year yet with the launch of an app that makes it even easier for brand managers, marketers and agencies to swipe right and access brand collaborations to reach new customers.

Launched as a web platform in 2015 by Australian entrepreneur Jess Ruhfus, Collabosaurus saw activity on the platform and revenue both skyrocket in 2020, as brands looked for creative ways to grapple with the pandemic and its effects. More than 2,479 connections (double the 2019 figure) took place on Collabosaurus last year between brands including Magic Mike, ASOS, The Iconic, Pinterest, Marks & Spencer and Bondi Sands.

Says Ruhfus: “Brand collaborations are a cost effective way for brands to reach new audiences using their existing strengths, something that became attractive last year when budgets went into freefall.”

This month, the 29-year old founder is fulfilling her original dream of launching Collabosaurus as an app that will make it even easier for its 8,000 users to browse, connect, chat and find their ‘perfect match’ for collaborations. Much like Canva has become the essential design tool for small businesses, Collabosaurus is the go-to for brands seeking partnerships.

Says Ruhfus (above): “The idea for Collabosaurus was inspired by Tinder and came to me when I was working in events and saw how time-consuming – yet beneficial – the brand collaboration process was.”

Prohibitively high development costs in 2015 put the goal of an app on hold, but through a collaboration with General Assembly’s User Experience team, those costs were halved with the end product developed in-house by Collabosaurus, which can be used across both Android and iOS devices.

Says Yin Ye, General Assembly’s UX instructional associate at the time of the app build: “Working with Collabosaurus gave our designers a rare inside look at how brands actually collaborate. It was also a valuable opportunity to see how real-world users engage with a platform like Collabosaurus in order to explore how we could improve their experience through design.”

Says Ruhfus: “The question we kept coming back to was how could we design an app that would help improve Collabosaurus’s role as the matchmaker of brands?

“Our platform already saves brands about 33 hours per collaboration. Those who are actively pitching opportunities have the research and outreach time reduced, plus they can easily locate the decision-maker within the business. Those who are assessing inbound requests can quickly filter these and also access some really unexpected wins.

“62 per cent of our users are using Collabosaurus on mobile. To finally give our community an even better experience and greater time savings through the convenience of an app is a huge milestone – and it all came about thanks to collaboration.”

The app is organised around three central tabs:
– Matches, where you can see algorithm-picked opportunities that fit the parameters and goals you’ve set and ‘swipe right’ to send a connection request to another brand;
– Requests, where you can respond to requests from other brands;
– Chat, where you can easily manage multiple conversations and get a collaboration opportunity off the ground.

The app will be especially appealing to agency executives working on collaborations for multiple brands, as well as larger brands who are often dealing with hundreds of inbound requests per week.

Says Lindsay Swain, social media content and community manager for Bondi Sands: “Moving recently to Bondi Sands and leading on brand partnerships across social media, I have found the support that Collabosaurus provides to be an exceptional resource.”

“As a global brand, we are constantly looking for new partners to work with across regions and the ease of communication and direct access via the new Collabosaurus app will be a game changer.”

Collabosaurus users mainly come from the beauty, fashion, lifestyle, food and beverage sectors, and range in size from The Iconic, ASOS, Marley Spoon and major PR agencies to Barre Body, N2 Gelato and small startups.

Swain uses Collabosaurus to broker collaborations for social media and has benefited from the time saved finding and engaging potential partners: “For Bondi Sands, we can cut the time spent sourcing and outreaching to partners and benefit from increased visibility to curated and high quality opportunities.”

Says Ruhfus: “The majority of the collaborations we see do not involve cash. Instead a fabulous beauty product might be offered by a retailer as a gift with purchase, a limited-edition flavour of your favourite ice-cream could be dreamt up by two brands, or a dream venue may become the backdrop to a big brand moment.”

The app’s release is scheduled for 25 May. The app will be available for download upon release on iOS, with the Android release scheduled for June.

Learn more about Collabosaurus: Website | Instagram | LinkedIn | App Store