Foound launches Foursquare of the future
Demo Fall 2010 sees the excellent demo of Foound, a clean mobile app for planning "hangouts" with friends.
SANTA CLARA, Calif.--I enjoyed the Foound presentation at Demo Fall 2010. Amid a morning full of demos of highly functional products, this one seemed to be actually fun, in addition to being in a hot and potentially profitable market.
Foound is a geosocial app, but unlike check-in services such as Foursquare and Gowalla, which tell your friends where you are, Foound tells them where you plan to be and who you want to be there with you. It's Evite for the smartphone generation. The app is small, visually simple, and unencumbered with silly frills.
Its mobile integration is smart, too. While you can add your Facebook and Twitter friends to your invitations, Foound also lets you import your phone's directory, which is more likely to be an accurate reflection of the people you enjoy meeting in the real world.
Found evangelist Lichi Wu told me the company isn't focusing on revenue at the moment, but that doesn't concern me (or, obviously, his investors), since a business that's focused on getting people into physical venues should not have too much trouble finding revenue streams if it's successful at winning a healthy user base. It may, however, have a tough time fighting off Facebook, whose Places and Events services are both competitors.
The company does need to expand beyond its current platforms--just the iPhone and the Web--but this small company is off to a good start with an attractive service and product.