Gidsy goes Global + Adds New Social Features
It seems no accident that Gidsy’s launch-wave of a whole new batch of features is dubbed “Columbus”. The great explorer went out to conquer the world and acquired new skills along the way - and no lesser are the ambitions of the Berlin-based team around the Dekker brothers. From today on the marketplace for authentic experiences lifts the city-tied approach and is available in every tiny town. Meaning: no matter where you live, everybody is able to offer experiences on the Gidsy platform and find their audience. The new release also includes search functions to improve discovery and more social features to better promote your activities and connect with the like-minded people on your ‘gig’. Read all about it on the blog.
A very smart move, as it turns Gidsy into a true global marketplace and puts the opportunity into the hands of the community. Over the last months since its launch, Gidsy has become a central destination to find stuff to do and things learn that go well beyond insider city tours. When we interviewed Edial Dekker a couple of weeks ago about his favourite hot spots and hidden gems in his ‘Wahlheimat’ Berlin, he also gave us a snapshot of some Gidsy experiences.
Here’s a small selection:
Global Gidsy Experiences
Some Snapshots form the Gidsy x EyeEm Mobile Imaging Masterclasssoci
“WINGS OF DESIRE” — Gidsy offers 60 minute flight over Berlin
The best sightseeing EVER - and one of the best experiences currently on Gidsy: Take in the ‘Himmer über Berlin’ from a 4-seater Cessna 172.
Here’s what’s going to happen:
Airborne-time is approx. 60 minutes. The flight starts at an airfield outside of Berlin and you will be picked up by car and returned to the meeting place after the flight. The whole event including driving time will take about 3,5 hours.
The price per flight is 249 € independent of the amount of persons flying. A maximum of 3 persons can come along on one flight so the minimum “per person” price is 83 €.
Dates are July 24/25/26/30/31.
And the sun is shining.
Source: gidsy.com
//INTERVIEW: Edial Dekker / Steve Jang// — We just kicked off a new series over at global City Guide Unlike, where founders give us the inside scoop on their local hangouts. First up is Edial Dekker, Co-Founder and CEO of Gidsy. Originally from Amsterdam, the ex-cook takes us through the hidden gems of tulip fields and locally produced food across his current home-base of Berlin.
A couple of weeks ago, we interviewed Edial in London together with Steve Jang, CEO of SF-based Soundtracking. Turns out, the 2 are friends from Edial’s Amsterdam days at The Next Web Conference. So we asked the two: “What would be the best ever local experience in San Francisco and Amsterdam?” — Hint: It includes Surfing, Snowboarding, Food, Red Light Districts and Skateboards. (Sorry for the busy background noise.)
Gidsy now offers local experiences and invites you to ‘do something different’ in 7 cities - more international expansion is on the plan. Here’s is a snapshot selection of the eclectic mix of Gidsy tours and maker workshops:
AMSTERDAM: This is Piet’s infamous ‘Policetour Redlight district ‘1980’ that Edial mentioned in our interview. Piet was a policeman in the 80ies at ‘Bureau Warmoesstraat’ and the Redlight District was his Kiez. Be prepared for a trip “back in time, into the world of drugs, prostitution, gambling and corruption.”
SAN FRANCISCO: Like Cheese? Then this one is for you. During the ‘Cheese Workshop’ you learn to make butter, ricotta, yogurt and cheddar all at once in a splash course on home cheese-making. One hundred percent of proceeds go towards community clinics in Haiti.
NEW YORK: The ‘Long Walks in Downtown NYC’ are a great opportunity to take a deeper dive into the city that never sleeps. Tour guide Deirdre knows all the hidden gems from The Village (East and West) to Tribeca, The Battery, Nolita, The Lower East Side and Brooklyn.
LONDON: Want to make a gleaming pot of homemade chutney? Sophie and Jenny from Rubies in the Rubble host chutney making days.
BERLIN: Betahaus offers hands-on workshops to Build your own design classics. In June you create Jean Prouvé’s lamp Potence, a classic from 1950 in 6 hours from easily available materials.
// MASTERCLASS EyeEm x Gidsy // — This is a perfect example of 2 Berlin start-ups joining forces: popular mobile photo app EyeEm offered a street-photography masterclass on Gidsy and these are the picturesque footprints across Berlin.
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Street art + photography have been at the very core of EyeEm and it brings back memories of my first EyeEm encounter: a mobile photo exhibit in Berlin. As we learned during a recent visit to the EyeEm studio, this was actually the result of a lucky accident…
Back in 2009, CEO Florian Meissner had lost his camera on the very first day of a new job at a photo magazine in New York and was forced to surrender to an iPhone as his one and only lens. He got hooked on mobile photography, published a book and “the rest is history”.
VISUAL DISCOVERY
EyeEm’s point of difference has always been a combination of deep routed passion for photography, mixed with great engineering talent. CTO Ramzi Rizk - dubbed by the team as ‘the best coding photographer’ - is the mastermind behind EyeEm’s data cube, which brings method to the picture madness. With mobile images sky-rocketing, the biggest issue for mobile photography is discovery and consumption. “How do I find images of places, topics and events that I really care about and that have an impact on my day-to-day decision making”, summarizes Florian the problem EyeEm wants to solve. EyeEm’s rigorous tagging system allows clustering of topics and locations and puts real relevance to mobile photo sharing. One can only imagine how valuable this ‘strictness’ will become in the future.
Instagram might have the masses, but the discovery process was always either silo’ed (friends and followers) or random (most popular). Whereas when you fire up EyeEm in a city, you automatically see a picture story of what’s happening around you. You can also follow albums from street-art, music, architecture, fashion and food to portraits and black/white photography. Ultimately, you are visually connecting with people around the globe who share the same interests. And it works: I have met like-minded ‘mobile photo maniacs’ in Toronto, Copenhagen, Barcelona and New York — just through images. — Lights, Camera, Action.
//COMMUNITY x MARKETPLACES// — There’s been a lot of buzz around Gidsy’s latest funding round which include a familiar group of people that increasingly seem to invest as an ensemble cast in Berlin. We take a closer look at the startup that promises to be an “Airbnb for authentic experiences”.
