What was the catalyst for launching locl?
locl was born from a post-pandemic desire to get out of the house and really connect with what was taking place in our local community, events that were taking place right on our doorstep but easy to miss due to the fragmented nature of event discovery, which is still true of today.
Tell us about the business – what it is, what it aims to achieve, who you work with, how you reach customers and so on?
locl aims to become the world's largest database of events. locl is an AI first business and we think of it a 'digital concierge' in your pocket. locl will get to know what you like to do and will helpfully recommend relevant events both hyper-locally and further afield. locl can suggest classes, quizzes, pub gigs, one off gatherings etc., in addition to the widely advertised music events, local to where you live or where you might be travelling to for holiday or work.
An important part of locl's mission is to help people not only get out and engage with their communities but connect with other people. Loneliness, as we all know, is a widespread issue and we feel locl can really help motivate people to interact with groups of like minded people. We also understand that local businesses and event organisers will benefit from our platform. Our desire is to foster an active and enriched ecosystem for local communities and businesses.
How has the business evolved since its launch?
We are pre-launch but have an Alpha POC demonstrator ready with an MVP not far off. We have started to speak with potential business partners and are aiming for a commercial pilot in December 2024 and a full launch in December 2025.
Tell us about the working culture at Locl
As with any startup, collaboration is key and our shared passion for locl's mission statement fosters the energy the team needs to succeed. Each team member brings a core set of skills and experience which is shared willingly, helping to lay the foundations for those joining us at locl.
How are you funded?
To date the founders have contributed to locl's development costs as well as putting in 1,000s of hours of time to get us to where we are today! We have just launched our first fundraise (pre-seed, S/EIS) so keen to speak to interested parties!
What has been your biggest challenge so far and how have you overcome this?
Raising money in the current climate is challenging but we are confident we can overcome this as we have a strong founder team with a proven track record. We have boot-strapped development to date in order to work towards our ultimate product vision and emerging technologies such as LLM and Vision AI are making it relatively easy to build highly innovative solutions on a small budget, assuming you have the relevant know-how.
How does locl answer an unmet need?
locl will provide a reliable and comprehensive source of information relating to events taking place right on their doorstep without the hassle of trawling through various ticketing/events websites. Events discovery simplified! The biggest challenge has been finding a solution to instantly return relevant and personalised events recommendations. Events discovery to date has been a very manual, fragmented process. Using LLM agnostic AI we can now instantly return relevant and personalised events recommendations. We even have the ability for users to upload a flyer or poster into our database for those events which aren't necessarily found online, giving further depth to our database.
What’s in store for the future?
In the immediate future we continue development of the platform with consumer testing to begin shortly. On the B2B side of the business we will be recruiting potential partners and early adopters within the travel app industry to offer access to locl's database as a 'white label' solution which will add value for their users.
Marcus Lee is the cofounder of locl.
