For Andrew Vest, using Yelp is often frustrating. While the platform can legitimately recommend highly-regarded companies, restaurants and other service-based entities, he can’t always trust it.
Who left the glowing 5-star review? What about that scathing 1-star write-up? Was it even a real person that actually experienced something, or is it just a paid bot?
So, as an entrepreneur, Vest naturally decided to create a solution to the problem.
The answer is Preferling, a stealth startup that just raised $100,000 from Seattle and Bay Area angels to kickstart development of a platform that recommends “preferred” services and establishments by your friends.
The “by your friends,” aspect is what separates this company from something like Yelp.
“This is a much easier way for individual users to find what they want, when they want, from people they trust,” said Vest, also a co-founder at Seattle-based Brandbuddee.
The inspiration for Preferling came about when Vest was looking for someone to do landscape work around his house. His Internet research on Google and Yelp provided conflicting reviews, so he went to Facebook next, asking his networks if anyone knew of a good company.
Sure enough, a friend responded and recommended someone who had done good work for him.
“But the whole process took forever and I wanted it done now,” Vest said.
Preferling features a simple but robust back-end system that uses big data and analytics to figure out what companies your friends have liked, reviewed, checked-in at and commented on the most to create a Pinterest-like profile for each user.
When you’re walking around any given area, Preferling will pull up a profile of friends — and friends of friends — who have had any type of interaction with a certain business, whether it’s a Foursquare check-in, Yelp review or Instagram photo.
Vest admits that there are many startups who’ve tried to create something similar, but “no one has really mastered it,” he said.
“I want this app to make you feel like a local, wherever you may be,” Vest said. “Yelp built a simple basic product that doesn’t take the friends factor into account and turned into something that is manipulated more so by money and not to what people are actually looking for or care about. People care about what their friends care about.”
Kirkland-based Preferling is still in development mode and Vest couldn’t provide many details about the startup, but did note that a beta version of the platform is coming soon. He’s also on the hunt for a co-founder and CTO.
