Former Airbnb staff launch native discovery app Bigfoot

US: Bigfoot, a brand new AI-powered tech startup created by Airbnb alumni, helps travellers to plan their weekends by offering native actions and experiences to guide.

Bigfoot makes use of a mixture of generative AI, user-generated content material and over 50 totally different trusted information sources to curate a easy method to discover greater than 120,000 occasions, eating places, bars, nightlife, sports activities, out of doors actions and extra throughout 160 cities.

This week, Bigfoot is launching Littlefoot, a personalised messaging platform the place customers can request suggestions in any language and obtain a curated checklist of occasions and actions for his or her native metropolis in response. Littlefoot affords Gen AI-powered pure language chat to assist folks make selections on occasions and locations extremely quick, as if texting a buddy.

Headed up by Alex Ward, former world director of actual property at Airbnb, James Robinson, former professional host director at Airbnb, and Shane Lykins, former product workforce lead at Airbnb, the founders are clear that Bigfoot isn’t just one other journey app however all about native discovery.

Co-founder and CEO, Alex Ward, stated: “The journey sector is extremely aggressive and crowded, and but, there’s a definite lack of nice instruments to assist folks plan their weekends. At its core, Bigfoot has been constructed from the bottom as much as tackle the elemental downside of native expertise discovery. It eliminates the necessity to sift by means of numerous sources, generic listicles and proposals from buddies or influencers, and is the most straightforward approach we may dream to get all of us out of the monotony and work of discovering new issues once we try to not do “the identical issues we at all times do.”

“If we are able to conquer the ache level of attempting to plan an amazing weekend, and other people use it in their very own yard, they’re going to make use of it once they journey too,” added Ward.

Bigfoot makes use of a number of giant language fashions [LLMs] together with Open AI, Anthropic and Perplexity to assist craft personalised ‘Greatest Days’ for customers, giving them a curated itinerary, interactive map, and TikTok movies for every expertise, which might be simply edited and shared with buddies. Customers can construct ‘Collections’ of their favorite issues and also will quickly have the ability to create a Assortment from an Apple be aware, electronic mail or Google Pins.

Future plans embody syncing with Spotify or Google Maps to get even higher suggestions and customized Collections.

Ward stated that Bigfoot is the product he and his workforce wished to construct at Airbnb, though they didn’t have the sources to take action.

Ward stated: “At Airbnb, we noticed that sensible design and seamless UX are important to offering intuitive experiences throughout all platforms – net and app – giving customers fast worth, with out the necessity for app downloads, logins, or paying to make use of the product. We’ve invested closely in information aggregation, LLM assisted enrichment and rating pipelines to compile prime locations and occasions from dozens of sources.

“What we’ve created is an up-to-the-minute content material engine that retains customers within the loop with out having to depend on human curators frantically scouring the online for the most recent issues to do. By using a number of LLMs to complement and categorise experiences with complete information factors, we’re in a position to ship an unbelievable, personalised information to your metropolis,” he added.

The long-term ambition for Bigfoot is to drive financial worth to native expertise suppliers and companies. Whereas it’s already monetising affiliate partnerships, the workforce is working to construct an AI-powered affords concentrating on platform for operators and house owners that enables them to achieve prospects on the good place and time, with extremely related worth and native reductions as an alternative of advertisements.