Society App: Idea to 130,000 Members
- Society Team
- Jul 10
- 4 min read
Updated: Jul 27
When Society Co-Founder Dr Matt Billington was president of King’s College London’s Dental Society, he noticed something frustratingly familiar: student groups were bursting with energy, ideas, and ambition - but running them was needlessly complicated.
Matt recalls: “When I entered my 4th year as a dental student at King’s College London, I soon discovered that being elected President of the KCL Dental Society came with its fair share of problems. After engaging with Presidents from other dental schools I soon discovered that nearly every new President of a university society is in the same boat, re-creating the wheel, each and every year.”
The problem wasn’t enthusiasm, it was infrastructure. Every committee juggled:
💬 Chaotic WhatsApp groups for messaging
📣 Instagram pages for promotion
🧩 Ticketing links scattered across platforms
🗂️ Spreadsheets for attendance
📬 Email lists nobody really read
Matt came up with an idea: a free, all-in-one app to help Presidents and Committees spend less time organising and more time building community - to connect students on a whole new level.
Late 2019
The First Launch
After much planning, development, testing, and real user feedback, Co-Founders Dr Matt Billington and Krishan Joshi launched Society App in 2019.
Within just 6 months of launching, Society became the leading app for student clubs in over 25 universities. Just a few months after that, Society was the leading app in over 117 universities with clubs and societies registered from Cambridge, Oxford, LSE, and Edinburgh to name just a few. Over 2,000 student users had already given over 270 five star reviews.
Society allowed student clubs to manage members, send announcements, sell tickets, and keep everything in one secure place.
2020–2022
Growth by Design
Once the app landed in new communities, a pattern became clear.
⚡ Events were booked out faster.
✅ Communication actually reached members.
🎯 Committees spent less time on logistics and more time on culture.
🔄 New student leaders inherited a system that already worked.
Year after year, university after university, the adoption repeated itself. Society became embedded in daily student life - because it solved a problem no one else had addressed.
In 2021, more than two hundred Society Ambassadors attended Freshers Fairs at Universities across the UK to promote the Society app to clubs, societies and students.
By 2022, Society was live in over 130 universities across the UK, with over 1,200 clubs on the app. Student unions and national networks started partnering to unify communication as it became the default club management system for student societies.
2022–2024
Scaling Up
Expansion beyond the UK soon followed. In June 2022, the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) Interfraternity Council (IFC) launched the Society app for over 500 participants to attend the biggest philanthropy weekend of the year, an event which raised over $30,000 for charities, planted 700 trees, and recycled 7,000 cans.
The IFC joined over 2,000 community apps in over 230 educational institutions worldwide using Society App.
Later the same year, Society reached #3 on the UK App Store top charts in the Lifestyle category overtaking apps such as Zoopla, Tinder and WeAre8.
Society’s rapid growth and geographical expansion resulted in over 3,000 individual Society Apps operating in over 250 educational institutions worldwide.
Less than one year later, in October 2023, there were over 5,000 student club apps on the Society platform with a huge milestone of 100,000 memberships as expansion continued across the US, UK, Europe and Asia.
2024-2025
Seeing the Bigger Picture
In 2024, Society was awarded “App Of The Year” at the renowned Dental Industry Awards, testament to the adoption and influence that the Society platform had achieved within dental schools.
By this time, one insight became obvious: the structural challenges faced by student societies weren’t unique to universities.
Everywhere, communities were struggling with the same problems: fragmented communication, low engagement, and administrative friction. From local sports clubs to professional networks, hobby groups, and creative collectives - the need for purpose-built infrastructure was universal.
The model validated by students could work anywhere communities needed structure.
Throughout 2025, while continuing to support and grow with student clubs, Society’s developers were working on building the future of the platform - expanding Society beyond universities to help club organisers, administrators, and members everywhere.
2026 & the future
Beyond Campus Life
Society v2.0 is the first chapter of that expansion.
Now, anyone can build a community that’s easy to manage and easy to find. Organisers can grow their groups efficiently rather than relying on scattered tools. Members can discover local clubs without waiting for a friend to refer them.
What started as a single dental society’s solution has evolved into a platform that powers real-world communities globally.
The journey from one campus to over 130,000 memberships wasn’t about hype or trends - it was built on steady adoption, repeated validation, and real results.
Society v2.0 is now open to the public, and still completely free. Download on the App Store or Play Store to manage your community with everything in one place.
