It’s a simple idea, but that’s why it’s brilliant. When you go out of town, the hotel concierge is there to help you plan your night, with tips on local restaurants and clubs. When you live in that town, you become less adventurous, and tend to hang out at the same old same-olds, doing the same old things. Even in the days of the internet, you lack the benefit of a concierge, so the most daring thing most people do is try out some place that has a Groupon coupon.
Enter Weotta.com. It’s a local start-up that describes itself as being, “like having your own personal concierge,” or, “like a Pandora for your social life.” The company will “scour the web for events, reviews and other social information so you don’t have to. Then, it presents the information that is relevant to you—based on what you tell us, and what we learn about you over time. In essence, it’s a personalized concierge service that not only gets to know what you like, but also helps you plan your night out.”
Weotta is the brainchild of brothers Grant and Forrest Wernick and an old friend of theirs Jake Perkins, all of them graduates of Los Gatos High. Forrest Grant explains that after speaking with hundreds of friends and acquaintances, they discovered that, “People want to do new things, but there’s no easy way for them to find out what’s going on. So they end up staying at home or going to the same place over and over again.”
They eventually started creating packages, based on people’s preferences and tastes, with main events and before- and after-activities to make for an exciting night on the town. “We’re just starting to scratch the surface of people’s personal tastes,” says Grant. Users sign into the site from Facebook, which gives the team even more insight into what their interests are.
Weotta currently operates in San Francisco and New York, as well as in Los Gatos, of course. In May, the team presented at TechCrunch, and the immediate response from the attendees was, “How quickly can we get this started in our town?” New rollouts could soon be coming to Seattle, Chicago, Denver, and DC.
Much of that depends on investors, and Grant says that they are already, “knocking on our door.” Before they decide what to do next, they have decided to take a step back and analyze all the options. Fortunately, they have the support of Mike Hart, Director of Engineering at Netflix. It is only fitting the biggest Los Gatos company to date helps the next big thing get off the ground.
