urbanspoon is an entrepreneurial success story that is worth talking about instead of all this fear mongering stuff (that I’m guilty of too). It’s a company that is lead by three guys Ethan, Adam, and Patrick. From what I can tell back in November 2006 they landed on the concept of collecting information about local restaurants and had launched their “proof of concept”. Since they lived in Seattle they started there and did all they could to get information and timely reviews about all of the Seattle restaurants by real people.
With the advent of the app store for the iPhone they really began to get some notice. By then they had expanded to multiple cities across the world and they kept it small with the three of them doing the bulk of the work. In early November they were in the Top 10 Free Apps with more than 1 million downloads. You may have seen the Apple commercial that started playing within the last 30 days. After that they doubled the downloads.
Here is the timeline that I was able to parse together:
Nov 2006 – urbanspoon.com in Seattle only
July 2008 – Free App on iPhone
Nov 2008 – 1 million downloads
Dec 2008 – 2.2 million downloads
I’ll admit, I didn’t know about it until the commercial. At the time I was in Anchorage, AK and was eating some pizza. I instantly downloaded it from the App Store and when I shook it for the first time with no insight beyond my GPS location it recommended Moose’s Tooth Pizza. The exact place that I had gone with some locals. Later I showed it to another local and the first shake gave the place they had dinner that night. Very cool.
Ethan said in a recent interview, “Advertisers are pushing their own iPhone apps, and a very few take advantage of the location-based nature of mobile, but for the most part they are still thinking about the iPhone as a small-screen web page. I think that will change. Mobile has immediacy, location, intimacy — a bunch of things the web is missing. Over time advertisers and publishers will figure out how to take advantage of all that.”
Their business model is simple. Solving one of life’s problems (like suggesting a place to eat) and doing it well. Food is a local business but it takes a more global approach an leveraging the power of technology to make a difference.
Most of there revenue is generated by advertising but they’re also building a community even if they don’t know it. Well done Ethan, Adam, and Patrick!! You deserve all the success that you’ve received.
