Visit Nibletz for more, or read the interview done by Kyle Sandler here:

Swiss Startup:
bguided Is Your Social City Guide

Zurich startup bguided is a social city guide for urban dwellers and visitors. The young but healthy startup is a personalized recommendation engine which combines social graph data mining and machine learning. bguided helps people find, organize, and share the cool places they love all in one place. It’s part discovery, part recommendation and part social local mobile.

What is bguided?

bguided is a worldwide, social city guide for urban people and city travellers that make cities easier to use and more interesting to explore.

bguided helps you find cool nearby locations by connecting you with people with similar taste and style as yours and recommending locations tailored to your taste patterns. A personally relevant experience, driven by mobile and social data.

Who are the founders and what are their backgrounds?

My name is Andreas Lorenz. I am the founder of bguided. Beside bguided I am the owner of dctrl™ [di:ken'troul], a digital development and consulting agency, established 2000 in Zurich, Switzerland. Here we work for a wide range of high-profile brands including IBM, Credit Suisse, UBS, Masterfoods, BASF and Swisscom. Before founding my own company I studied architecture.

Where are you based?

We are based in Zurich. It is the largest city here in Switzerland (in the middle of Europe), a leading financial center, a global city and was named the city with the best quality of life in the world. 

What’s the start-up scene/culture like where you’re based?

Since the last 5 years, the start-up scene here has changed a lot and is getting very active with companies like Wuala (Online Storage, wuala.com), Doodle (Online Scheduling Service, doodle.com), DeinDeal (Group buying site, deindeal.ch), Local.ch (Local Search engine, local.ch). There is money, but there is not really a venture scene for Internet start-ups. So a lot of the start-ups here are spin-offs from universities (like ETHZ) with lots of prior research and high-class students. That’s the reason Google, Microsoft, IBM, Disney Research, Evernote and others opened offices in our town the last years.

How did you come up with the idea for bguided?

I came up with the idea for bguided one day in Paris, when I asked my selves: how do I find the in-places where the locals hang out, places I’ve never heard of, but are exactly what I am looking for right now, right here? And so bguided.com was born.

What problem does bguided solve?

bguided recommends cool nearby locations based on the taste of each individual, as well as his or her friends. The result is search that is tailored to each individual person’s preferences, for more relevant recommendations and quicker decisions on the go.

Facebook tells me what my virtual friends are doing, bguided tells me where they are and where I can meet them in the REAL WORLD, at REAL PLACES. This makes cities easier to use and more interesting to explore. bguided brings you back the social aspect of social media in the real world!

What’s your secret sauce?

bguided is a personalized recommendation engine, which combines social graph data mining and machine learning. We help you find, organize and share the cool places – all in one place – so you can get going and start discovering new locations.

What’s one dilemma you’ve encountered in the start-up process?

Having a great idea before the tools to realize it are available. I came up with bguided years ago, there where no social media, no Facebook, no Twitter, no Foursquare and no smart phones. The idea was there, but how to realize it without even a map-provider (Google Maps did not exist at this time)?

What’s one challenge you’ve overcome in the start-up process?

Where should I start? There are so many directions to explore, so many great features to integrate. I am a kind of perfectionist. Not the best characteristic for a start-up-founder. So one day my wife got crazy and told me: “ just do it, start with the basics!”

At this day we started developing bguided in a lean way. This means we started with an «minimum viable product» and will adding more and more features, based on usage patterns and user feedback. We’re still on a long time run…

What’s the first thing you would do for bguided with a one million dollar investment?

Invest in growth (developers), to develop versions of bguided for all Smartphone operating systems, to build our own location based advertising system and to localize all our content in more languages.

What’s next for bguided?

After an intense time, next month we will release our first mobile app for bguided, under the name «Meet’Me». This beta version will be the core engine of any future add-ons until we’re there where we want to be.

Thanks to Nibletz and Kyle Sandler for their great support!

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Thanks for the support!

Here the full article by Anna Weilberg in german:

Das Start-up bguided.com aus Zürich lanciert einen weltweiten Online-City-Guide, in dem Menschen nicht nur individualisierte Tipps erhalten, sondern auch Gleichgesinnte kennenlernen können.

Städteführer mit Tipps zu Bars, Restaurants, Cafés und Clubs gibt es viele, auch im Internet. Dennoch verspricht das Schweizer Start-Up bguided.com noch einmal einen Mehrwert: Unter dem Slogan »discover, share, meet – never get lost« bietet bguided eine Mischung aus Social Network, App und City Guide. Nach der Anmeldung erstellen Nutzer ein Profil sowie ein Netzwerk aus Freunden. Wenn sie in einer Stadt unterwegs sind und Tipps zum Ausgehen suchen, werden die Empfehlungen an ihren individuellen Geschmack angepasst – was mit der Zeit immer genauer funktioniert.

Die Suchresultate, die über einen Algorithmus an die Interessen des Suchenden adaptiert werden, stammen von Google Places, Facebook Places, Foursquare und anderen Quellen.

bguided möchte Neben Tipps zu Clubs, Restaurants, Cafés und Bars aber noch mehr liefern: Jeder Nutzer hat die Möglichkeit, seine favorisierten Locations mit Freunden zu teilen und die Entdeckungen anderer zu bewerten. Über sein Profil kann er zudem Personen mit gleichen Interessen kennenlernen und sich mit ihnen verabreden. Auf diese Weise soll das soziale Netzwerk aus der virtuellen Welt zurück in die »reale« Welt geholt werden. Keine neue Idee, aber doch ein neues Angebot.

Als Verabredungs-Tool dient die mobile App Meet’Me, die mit der Plattform bguided verknüpft ist: Der Nutzer wählt Ort und Zeit, und schickt anschließend über die App Einladungen an seine Freunde.



Andreas Lorenz, Gründer und Geschäftsführer von bguided, erklärt: »Die Idee hatten wir eines Tages in Paris, als wir uns fragten, wo hängen all die lokalen Leute ab, wo sind die nicht alltäglichen Bars, die uns gefallen, die Clubs die unsere Musik spielen?« Aus diesem »Eigeninteresse« heraus entwickelten er und sein Team bguided.

Aktuell können Sie sich online für die Beta-Einladungsliste registrieren. Sie erfahren dann direkt, wann es los geht.

We are happy to keep you updated about the latest news of the bguided progress, just follow us on Twitter, Facebook, Google+ or here on our bguided-blog!

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We’ve started a blog as companion to bguided, in order to start conversations with YOU about how we can make bguided better, faster, stronger, shinier. Also, it’s going to be where we’ll posting news, product update information, new features, helpful tips, feedback, behaviours, fixes-to-annoyances etc. And maybe even a little of the philosophy behind bguided…

Our goal is to give you the information you need to really enjoy using bguided. Currently, amongst other things, we’re working on the first beta version which should be ready soon! So don’t wait and join our exclusive invite list for early access.

We’re going to be using this blog to announce new “affordances” and get your feedback on them. There’s a ton of new and exciting stuff to tell you about, so stay tuned and watch this space!

Thanks,
- Andreas Lorenz & the bguided team

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