Eventblimp Helps You Fly Away from Boredom
It may take a while depending on the place, but it always happens eventually: you get into a routine, you constantly check out your usual haunts, and you get bored. It can be tough finding new things to do, new places to visit, especially if you’re still finding your way around an adopted city – or worse, if you’re just stuck in a rut in your old hangouts. That’s what Eventblimp hopes to fix.
Much like Padmapper takes housing listings from Craigslist and Rent.com and lets you search them out based on their location, the Eventblimp app and website aggregates events listed on sites like Facebook, Meetup, Bansintown, and more, and overlays them on what looks and functions a whole lot like Google Maps. You can zoom in and out with your mouse’s scroll wheel, click-and-drag to move your view, and you can even search events and locations using filters that include start times and ticket prices.
Despite Eventblimp still being in its early stages with version 1.1, the great news is that it works. Within minutes of exploring my neighborhood, I found some weird video game comedy event I’d never heard about happening a few blocks south of my apartment in Minneapolis. Now I’ve got something cool to do on Thursday night when I would’ve otherwise stayed home staring at the ceiling.
Based in Boulder, CO, Eventblimp, Inc, and the app that bears its name, is the brainchild of company CEO and founder Chris Good. His moment of inspiration came upon him in that most creative of environments. He was drinking.
“I was sitting at The Standard Biergarten in NYC with a couple of friends on a Saturday trying to figure out what to do next besides going to the same bars we always hit,” explains Good. “I wanted to be spontaneous. I started a usual rant about how there should be an app that shows me everything going on around me right now. Usually these ideas taper off, but this one stuck and got people excited.”
More than a few people have gotten excited about the promise of Eventblimp. Today the company has announced angel funding from the founding partners at Grey Mountain Partners, a private equity firm that also used to be Good’s former place of employ. Along with Chief Technology Officer Weston Platter and advisor Naren Tayal, founder and CEO of Tayal Ventures International, Good is looking forward to Eventblimp’s future.
“We’re just scratching the surface,” says Good. “At the core of what we do is the data. Now that we’re running full steam, in short order you’ll open up the app and go anywhere in the world, and we will have events that are appropriately categorized and robustly searchable.
“The other big development on the horizon is the sponsored events feature,” he continues. “As our user base grows, we’re going to have an event-advertising platform where event promoters can easily make their event standout on the map with a few clicks and a credit card. We’ve also been getting a lot of feedback on features that our end users want. One example is a kid friendly filter so parents can find places to take their kids without scouring random publications around town. That’s definitely on the horizon for mom and dad with many more to come for other audiences.”
Right now Eventblimp is up and running on the web, but its app is only available for iOS devices. But that won’t be the case for too long.
“Getting up on Android is a top priority for the company,” says Good. “There’s no question that’s a market that must be addressed.”
The company is also starting a program to partner up with hotels so they can help their guests find interesting destinations around town.
“Hotels are currently spending money on pamphlets and other things that go stale. In our mobile world with Eventblimp, guests who don’t know what’s going on because they’re from out of town can always be in the know.”
And if you want to be in the know, the answer is pretty simple: check out Eventblimp and get a birds-eye view of what’s happening in your neck of the woods.