Hi everyone! My name is Pascal, an entrepreneur from Amsterdam. After 1.5 years of hard work with my fantastic team, we just launched Soulpicks, a mobile app that helps users discover places loved by friends and experts, as well as build your own collection of places.
After I built my first company (SnappCar), I was lucky enough to go traveling for some time. During that time, I noticed how difficult it is to keep track of all the great recommendations I got from friends, as well as access collections from local experts. Our time is scarce, so we want to make the most of it whenever we can, I thought. Moreover, we want to spend our time offline doing what we love instead of online searching where to go.
That is why I built Soulpicks. You can now download Soulpicks for iOS & Android.
Some of the key features include:
* Add places and experiences around the world.
* Connect with friends to discover their favorite places.
* Follow experts (in areas such as wine, beer, food, art, and lifestyle) who have created custom lists of the places they love most.
* Import places you previously collected from Google Maps, Foursquare, notes or e-mails (and CityMaps2Go - this is currently Android-only).
Over the coming months, we will add more awesome features, mostly based on your feedback. Therefore, we'd love to know what you think and what we can improve. I'll be on here to answer all of your questions!
Cheers, Pascal
Hi Pascal! Sounds like a great idea for a travel app, but have you ever used Foursquare City Guide on your past travels? It literally offers all the functionalities you have spend 1.5y to build a completely new app:
- add places & experiences -> write tips, create custom lists
- connect with friends -> follow their profiles
- follow experts -> follow other users with expertise in any of 700+ categories
Moreover, there are already 10years of hyperlocal content in 200 countries on Foursquare, all accessible via super sophisticated AI/ML algorithms, why on earth should I switch applications now and import it into a copycat app, that is just starting with data about 10 spots in Amsterdam...?🤔
@shnellbag Hi Steffen,
Thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts.
We've chosen this approach exactly because there's so much information out there, like you describe. Blogs, travel apps, influencers, content that's created by strangers: people you don’t know or advertisers. This makes it complicated for a lot of people to find experiences they will actually love.
We felt the need for an app to discover and collect places within a closed community of like-minded people and experts without any interference of advertisers. Soulpicks follows a user-centered approach, is advertisement-free and keeps users' privacy and data secure through encryption.
Users rely on their own preferences, suggestions from like-minded friends and inspiring experts.
Our experts are currently mostly based in Amsterdam. But we will soon introduce passionate experts from all over the world to help users easily find places in areas they haven't been to before.
Thanks again!
Pascal
Personally, I really like the friends angle. The "experts" angle seems to be pretty well trodden (i just google travel blogs or something). My feedback would be to make it easier to get friends onto the platform to use it!
@pascal_ontijd No problem, looking forward to seeing where you go with this. By the way seeing as you just launched I have a market research service where for $12 you can ask 100 people a question then follow-up based on how they answered and even interview them! https://scoops.io/
You could ask e.g. "When you travel would you want to know where your friends have been and what they recommend?" Anyway If you want to give it a shot feel free to sign up and let me know which email you used over Intercom and I'll pass you $12 in free credits.
Best of luck otherwise!
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