Montreal-born Startup Acquired by Airbnb
Tech evangelist Robert Scoble called Montreal’s Localmind the best app at SXSW in 2011. Shortly after they raised $600K in angel funding led by Granite Ventures with Real Ventures and iNovia Capital also participating.
Localmind is an iPhone app that uses geo-location to answer questions you have about a location. Ask Localmind a question, and the app finds another user at the location you need info about, and delivers the question to them.
For example, you could ask if there is a wait for a restaurant you want to visit, or you could find out if a product is available at a store, and get a response from a living, breathing human being.
Today Airbnb announced that they have acquired Localmind‘s technology, intellectual property, product, and three-person team.
According to their announcement post, “We love Localmind’s product – a platform that lets users crowdsource wisdom about what’s happening on the local scene in real time. Even more than that, we think the Localmind team (Lenny Rachitsky, Beau Haugh, and Nelson Gauthier) is frankly awesome”.
And apparently the acquisition is already bearing fruit with the Localmind product team integrating new social initiatives into the Airbnb experience.
Localmind was co-founded by CEO Lenny Rachitsky and CTO Beau Haugh and originally raised $50K in late 2010 from accelerator Year One Labs.
