Pallian Creative

This post is long overdue! I’ve been meaning to do a full write-up on Geotoko since our announcement at Techcrunch Disrupt, but like all new startups, we’ve been in an agile development mode re-writing and improving our code all the while adding in new features based on user feedback. But before I go into that, lets start from the beginning:

We hatched the idea of Geotoko in early March just before SXSW. We shared the idea around at the conference with a few friends over plenty of beer to get some initial thoughts and feedback. We even met up with Naveen from foursquare to get his reaction… and of course, Naveen being the cool sly guy he is, nodded and agreed that businesses needed a platform to manage checkins. Of course, this was before foursquare had any kind of platform for businesses to claim a venue.

Our goal with Geotoko was to create a platform that delivers location-based content and geo-targeted promotions and allows small businesses to manage and reward customers for checking-in. Checking-in, after all, is the hot new thing to do. We didn’t want to limit this experience to just Foursquare users, so we added in Gowalla and support for location-enabled tweets. We then pitched this idea to Arrington for consideration to Techcrunch Disrupt and were lucky enough to get selected to present on stage at the event. We didn’t have a working prototype then, so we presented a lot of mockups that showed the flow of the application and how it would be useful for a small business. Only problem was - Robert Scoble, or Scobleizer, as he is affectionally known, was a judge on our panel - and he didn’t buy it. His argument was that small businesses didn’t fully understand the checkin space and that we were going to have a hard sell that required a Groupon style sales force for local markets. Back then, I argued that he was wrong and that there was an emerging group of tech savvy businesses (thanks again to Groupon) that was interested in trying out location-based apps and using it to attract more foot traffic to their locations. But I really didn’t have any data to back me up so Scobleizer won that round. My take away from that experience was that I knew we had something big, we just had to get it to production and nail down our exact audience. Which is exactly what happened next.

Fast forward to July - we had a working prototype ready that had a simple and easy to user interface. Our focus was on building a really simple platform that business owners would find easy to use. I got in touch with our friends at Mashable and got an awesome coverage for our beta launch. 24 hours later, we had over a thousand new beta users trying out Geotoko.

Which brings us to the present. Mashable brought us another 1000 signups over the next few weeks and we started noticing that almost everyone who signed up was an agency or a brand as opposed to a small business. We saw some really big names come through and folks were emailing us daily to see if we could add certain features that were currently not available on either Foursquare or Gowalla. We saw colleges and universities sign up, we saw casinos sign up, we saw a huge influx of European agencies sign up… especially from Germany, UK and Turkey. We even got concert promoters and hollywood studios sign up. I finally understood what Scobleizer was talking about - small businesses are not as active in the location marketing space as the bigger agencies and brands. Which is also probably why Foursquare is having a lot of luck signing up the big names like Starbucks and Wholefoods as opposed to your neighborhood coffee stop.

Last night I sent out a quick survey using Survey.io to see how we were doing and what we can do better. We’ve been working behind the scenes since that Mashable post (adding in a ton of new features including support for Facebook places) but it’s always good to connect with customers and see how we can help. The response has been overwhelming. 86% of users said they would be disappointed if they could no longer use Geotoko. I take that as a good sign. We asked how we can improve and the feedback varied from adding new features to keeping the service free.

While our focus has shifted slightly from small businesses to larger agencies, our platform is still simple and easy to use for a small business owner. There is no barrier to entry and there is no user behavior change required from your customers. Our platform will continue to allow you to create location-based marketing campaigns for iPhone, Android, BlackBerry and other smartphone users.

We’re just a few days away from launching a new and much improved version of Geotoko. With advanced prizing options to awesome heat maps that show how your business compares to your neighbors, we’re just getting started! Our product roadmap for the next few months includes options to geo-fence your location to QR code checkins, along with more game mechanics and tighter integration with Facebook.

We understand that the location-based marketing space is still in its infancy stage and that you may not get an immediate ROI… but with Foursquare just crossing 3 million users and with Facebook Places bringing checkins to 500 million users, there’s really no good reason for you not to sign up with Geotoko.

We’re also launching an official Geotoko blog next week where I’ll be blogging more about location-based marketing and how Geotoko can help. In the meantime, visit Geotoko.com and request an invite and follow us on twitter for all the latest news. Read & Discuss

Today, after months of hush hush, I am pleased to announce my latest venture GEOTOKO! We’re a finalist at TechCrunch Disrupt Startup Battlefield taking place today in New York city. We were lucky enough to be one of the 20 companies selected from over 500 companies that applied from around the world.

Geotoko will officially go live tomorrow afternoon at 2pm. You can watch the live unveiling HERE. In the meantime, follow us on twitter and keep an eye out on our homepage for some awesomeness coming out tomorrow! Read & Discuss