Can you create an app revolving around boredom? Apparently, yes. Michał Tajchert, Andrzej Torski, Andrii Kovalchuk and Bartek Pichalski are the founders of Yawn – an application that allows you to “yawn”, signalizing to your friends that you are bored. If they “yawn” back, it’s as good reason as any to meet or plan some activities together.

“We are targeting an emotion of boredom as a driver towards other activities, and we aim to engage users before they will even know how they want to kill their time. We are there before opening Youtube, Snapchat, Instagram or endless scrolling Facebook on user phone,” says Tajchert, the CEO of Yawn. He is a graduate of Mobile Platform Programming major and has a vast experience of programming for Android, including apps for wearable products.

The idea of a social app was born because of the “contagious yawning” phenomenon. Once we notice someone yawning, we automatically start to yawn, too. Tajchert wanted to create an app that would let the yawning go viral. The app lets you share the yawns with friends, tracks them, plots maps, calculates the distance of how far they travel, and rewards you for particular ones – for example, a Christopher Columbus achievement is unlocked for a Europe–America–Europe route.

Additionally, Yawn is a great way to overcome the awkwardness of reconnecting with friends you haven’t seen for some time. After all, you’re not interrupting them in any serious business with your yawns – they are bored, too.

Yawn was launched in June without funding and virtually no marketing. After three weeks, the app had over 200 active users who helped in beta-testing. As Yawn received good feedback from investors and won a few pitch competitions, the team decided to launch a polished Android version. It is going to be a final test for the app and a good source of traffic data that can be used to raise venture capital in Poland or Germany.