Flickr co-founder launches Findery app to be the “Google of where”

March 11, 2014 Leave a comment

Flickr co-founder launches Findery app to be the “Google of where”

March 6, 2014 4:00 pmby Hannah Kuchler

A Flickr co-founder has been quietly compiling a map of the world’s stories in an attempt to transform location-based apps from drab star-based ratings and recommendations into a lively map packed with history, culture and personal tales.

From the historical Blue plaques that line London streets to maps of subcultures such as “Punk Rock in Chicago”, Caterina Fake’s new app Findery aims to help users discover new places in a more imaginative way.

“Discovery” has become a buzzword in Silicon Valley as sites such as Findery and Pinterest aim to help people get more out of the internet, when they don’t know enough about what exactly they want to search for.

“Google owns the what, Facebook owns the who, we want to own the where,” Ms Fake, founder and chief executive of Findery, said. She wants to challenge the assumption that location-based services are “all wrapped up”: There are “20 ways” to find local deals and recommendations from Yelp to Foursquare but nothing that presents are more rounded view of a place through the eyes of its users, she said.

Ms Fake helped found Flickr, the photo service bought by Yahoo, and Hunch, a collaborative decision-making platform. She said she started Findery on the Web first to ensure the world was covered in notes and stories before the service was formally launched – with the mobile app – on Thursday.

Backed by Redpoint Ventures, True Ventures and the Founder Collective, Findery has not yet started to take advertising but is in the very early stages of looking at sponsored stories in much the same way as Twitter has promoted tweets.

Some brands are already using the site without paying, Ms Fake said, with American Eagle Outfitter using it to show where it shot its adverts in Costa Ricoa and a taco restaurant showing where it sources its Tequila in Mexico.

 

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Kee Koon Boon (“KB”) is the co-founder and director of HERO Investment Management which provides specialized fund management and investment advisory services to the ARCHEA Asia HERO Innovators Fund (www.heroinnovator.com), the only Asian SMID-cap tech-focused fund in the industry. KB is an internationally featured investor rooted in the principles of value investing for over a decade as a fund manager and analyst in the Asian capital markets who started his career at a boutique hedge fund in Singapore where he was with the firm since 2002 and was also part of the core investment committee in significantly outperforming the index in the 10-year-plus-old flagship Asian fund. He was also the portfolio manager for Asia-Pacific equities at Korea’s largest mutual fund company. Prior to setting up the H.E.R.O. Innovators Fund, KB was the Chief Investment Officer & CEO of a Singapore Registered Fund Management Company (RFMC) where he is responsible for listed Asian equity investments. KB had taught accounting at the Singapore Management University (SMU) as a faculty member and also pioneered the 15-week course on Accounting Fraud in Asia as an official module at SMU. KB remains grateful and honored to be invited by Singapore’s financial regulator Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to present to their top management team about implementing a world’s first fact-based forward-looking fraud detection framework to bring about benefits for the capital markets in Singapore and for the public and investment community. KB also served the community in sharing his insights in writing articles about value investing and corporate governance in the media that include Business Times, Straits Times, Jakarta Post, Manual of Ideas, Investopedia, TedXWallStreet. He had also presented in top investment, banking and finance conferences in America, Italy, Sydney, Cape Town, HK, China. He has trained CEOs, entrepreneurs, CFOs, management executives in business strategy & business model innovation in Singapore, HK and China.

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