Damien Patton got the idea for his startup, Banjo, while waiting around the Boston airport for a flight to Las Vegas.
A friend that he hadn't seen in years happened to be waiting for a flight just one gate over, which Damien only discovered after the fact - Damien tweeted his location while his friend checked in, and while both posted about their locations, they missed connecting with each other as they used different social networks.
Banjo aims to solve this network-based issue by taking the network out of the equation by providing a real-time, on-the-ground view of what's happening right now through the eyes of friends and connections both around the corner and across the globe. Basically, it's a layer on top of existing social networks.
We’ve all missed out on things that we care about. Failing to reconnect with an old friend, realizing too late that a favorite band or team were in town, missing a new business opportunity. We need a way to sort through all the information, to find out not just what things are but where they are.
That’s where Banjo comes in. Banjo's powerful location technology brings you the moments you would otherwise miss from the people and places you care about. We show you the people, places and things you care about, in real time, so you never need to miss out on the important things in your life.
Funded primarily by Blue Run Ventures, Banjo's market includes everyone with smartphones and continues to grow as smartphone penetration increases around the world.
The service works by aggregating a user's social networks into one feed, where users can browse according to location. They can see their friends' social posts nearby, or they can simply browse a location (say Sydney, Australia) to see the public posts from people nearby.
Users can then browse recent updates from friends, which allows them to see any friend updates that happen to be tagged with a nearby location.
To explore a friend's location, users can click through to each friend's current location using the "Visit me in..." button. By clicking, users are now brought to a live feed of public posts from both friends and strangers who have made geo-located content publicly available.
There's also a chat function to talk with friends that also use Banjo, perhaps useful for those friends who are not in a user's phone book, and the ability to post to all connected social networks from within the Banjo app.
The increased acceptance and usage of location-based services benefits startups like Banjo that promise to eliminate travelers' missed connections. The ubiquitous addition of location tags to content has also made it feasible to plot geo-located content on a map to facilitate place-based exploration and discovery. Place-based content is now being mapped across the industry, facilitating these sorts of place-based plays.
Other companies have also recognized Banjo's potential: the app has been the "App of the Week" in iTunes and Google Play, in addition to being named in the "Best Apps of 2012" by both stores.
Read on for the Tnooz Q&A with co-founder Damien Patton.
Describe what your start-up does, what problem it solves (differently to what is already out there) and for whom?
Banjo keeps you connected to the people, places and things you care about most. Going back to the very reason Banjo was created, the social space is noisy, it’s disjointed and we end up missing out on the things that are important to us. We all have a fear of missing out and Banjo cures that fear.
Why should people or companies use your startup?
Banjo provides the only real time, on the ground view of what’s happening anyplace, anytime.
Most location based technology focuses on the who or what’s around you. Banjo takes you there, anywhere in the world to discover real time information. When you want to search for something, you go to Google. When you want to know what’s happening right now at any location in the world, you go to Banjo.
Other than going viral and receiving mountains of positive PR, what is the strategy forraising awareness and getting customers/users?
The strategy has always been to build a really awesome product that everyone will love, not just the early adopter in Silicon Valley. Banjo is used in almost every country in the world and continues to grow through people sharing our technology with others. We are very focused on the user experience and the product.
How did your initial idea evolve? Were there changes/any pivots along the way?What other options have you considered for the business if the original vision fails?
Banjo has absolutely evolved. We have a saying at Banjo: “We are all wrong. The user will tell us when we are right.”
We do a tremendous amount of user testing and with that testing, we learn about what users wish they could do, what they love, what they don’t and that gives us tremendous insight into the product. We learn a lot from our users and sometimes some of the best ideas come them. We are very open-minded and we actively listen to our users.
While it’s important to have a business plan, and everyone asks about monetization, I think the better question is, “How can I build a product that will get millions of users so I CAN monetize.” You can have the best monetization plan in the world but if you don’t have anyone using your product……well, then your plan means nothing.
Where do you see yourselves in 3 years time, what specific challenges do you hopeto have overcome (please refrain from using biggest, best or most awesome in youranswer)?
We will no longer search for things – Banjo will push real-time,personalized content based on the things that are important to us. Our challenge will be continued market penetration to more cultures and demographics.
What is wrong with the travel, tourism and hospitality industry that requires anotherstartup to help it out?
The hospitality industry is a thriving industry, and it’s quickly evolving. The biggest opportunity for travel, tourism and hospitality is to shift to current technology. We are a mobile and social society. Travel means mobile and the industry as a whole has yet to understand their mobile user and how to engage them.
We no longer use a travel agent because we are now our own travel agent. We want lots of information very quickly. We want a deal, we want a great experience.
Take an app like HotelTonight. They offer last minute deals in various cities around the world. There is no reason all the hotel chains couldn’t do the same thing. This isn’t groundbreaking technology. It’s just a fresh new way to deliver deals to travelers and for hotels to sell their rooms.
Often BIG companies are not structured to be agile. They will talk about an idea for months instead of just doing it. The startup just does it.
Tnooz take:
There is most definitely the need to sort through the copious social media updates of the modern age. Determining relevancy to the user is what drives most networks, with things like Facebook's EdgeRank powering relevancy for that particular network.
However, unless a user happens to login at just the right moment, it can be very difficult to catch updates from those nearby, thus potentially missing an in-person connection.
Banjo fills this need, and also makes for an interesting discovery tool when traveling in a new location - or looking at posts nearby a home location.
This functionality could easily be replicated by Facebook, Twitter or a myriad of other startups looking to solve the "relevancy amidst an overabundance of content" challenge. Banjo will therefore need to keep pushing towards a clear differentiator, whether it be through technology that leads to acquisition, or an active user base that really engages with the service.
It also needs to offer a more clear value to the consumer in the near-term: how does this service benefit her, how will it save her time/increase connections, and why she should keep coming back.
All that being said, this particular writer finds it increasingly useful to browse Facebook according to location - often I am the most interested in friends who are currently traveling, and truly enjoy exploring my social streams according to location rather than simply some unseen algorithm attempting to serve up what it thinks I want.
Dreaming of travel, connecting with friends, discovering new connections, rekindling lost friendships - these all become possible via Banjo.
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