Have you ever spent weeks getting excited for a festival or sporting event, only to spend half of your time actually there calling or texting your friends to try and figure out where they are?
— a hyperlocal navigation app developed in Chicago — is working to make this kind of immersion-breaking phone tag a thing of the past.
We’ve grown accustomed to being able to pulling out our phones whenever we’re looking for something and get easy-to-follow directions on how to get there. But when you’re at a major outdoor event — like a college football tailgate party or a music festival — no such directions exist. If a map is provided it’s usually in paper or PDF form, and it often won’t do you much good in finding your friends.
Meetball helps you do just that by letting you “throw” meetballs — event markers with specific GPS coordinates — that your friends can easily navigate to. Once a marker has been created, it can be shared with your friends either inside the app or via social media. Your friends can then use the app’s built-in compass and distance tracker to find you.
Avid football fans and co-founders Matthew and Ryan Owen originally launched Meetball as a social utility app for tailgaters. The business model has since shifted to selling the platform as a B2B solution for event organizers — particularly for large events with multiple points of interest and a need to provide audiences with location-based real-time updates.
To supplement the app’s GPS capabilities, the company is also working on a network of digital beacons that can be placed at key spots around a venue and notify passersby of relevant events, promotions and athlete or performer appearances. Moving forward, the team also hopes to leverage proximity beacons to help crowds navigate indoor venues and remote venues with poor GPS and wireless signals.
Meetball currently has working partnerships with NASCAR's NEMCO Motorsports and a number of marathon events across the country. The company is also in conversation with potential buyers of every size, from one of the country’s largest alumni organizations, to players in the conference space and organizers of smaller events like local half marathons.
Split between Pennsylvania and Chicago, the meat of Meetball’s tech team is located in Chicago, where co-founder and CIO Matthew Owen lives. To date, the company has raised just over $2 million in funding, and is getting ready to bring on additional developers over the next six months.
Images via Meetball.
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