✨ The future of Helpfulpeeps

We launched Helpfulpeeps back in 2015 to create a new kind of community built on kindness.

It wasn’t about likes and it wasn’t about shares—it was a place where our members could experience the joy of giving.

Fast forward three years and over 180,000 people have joined our community right across the UK. We’ve created a platform where our members can find help with anything and a new outlet for generosity.

As we put the final touches on a major update shipping in January, I thought I’d take a look back at how Helpfulpeeps has evolved and share details about an exciting chapter ahead.

The scope of help is expanding beyond favours

People often ask what they can request on Helpfulpeeps. The reality is it’s a place to find help with anything. With over 35,000 requests responded to, we’ve seen our members happy to help with everything from language lessons to gym training, plumbing support and even hamster, chicken, and rat sitting. Yes, really ... 🐀

What started as a favour-sharing network has evolved into a more sophisticated marketplace over the last 12 months. Now, where a request extends beyond a small favour, money is exchanging hands. In response, our team have been building a payments layer into our suite of web, iOS and Android applications. This will enable our members to earn money for helping and allow us to fulfil our global ambitions by taking a commission on paid-for services.

Advancing the technology that powers our community

As a digital platform that connects people in the real world, our work at Helpfulpeeps HQ can be judged on the seamlessness by which our members move from posting a request to marking it complete, and the joy they experience in that process.

To move us forward, we shipped the first version of our native iOS and Android apps earlier in the year—meaning our members can check in on the latest requests whilst out and about. This was a key development, but we’re just getting started. We’re super excited about a major update to the Helpfulpeeps app coming in the new year that takes all we have learned about how our members are using the platform today and makes every aspect of the experience better. Think real-time communication, a fresh gamification and rewards system for activity, machine learning to make our matching engine even more powerful, and a beautiful new UI.

Props to our superstar engineers – Alberto and Endre – for their hard work on all this 🙏

The next step

We’ve come a long way since we launched our pilot back in 2015, but none of it would have been possible without the support of our members and wider friends of Helpfulpeeps.

Thank you for all you have done to move us forward. We hope you’ll continue supporting us in our mission to build the world’s most helpful network.