Found Launches in Singapore, Again

Mobile application Found is back with a recently launched app for Singapore. Previously named Foound, as some might remember, the start-up has an interesting journey so far. It swung from a successful early demo to a rather unimpressive worldwide launch. But it’s good to see the Singapore-based app bouncing back again, hopefully stronger this time.

Danny Tan, the CEO and founder of Found (say that three times fast!), told me that his start-up is essentially tackling the same old problem with this new app — helping users to organize outings with their friends more efficiently and effectively. But this time round, Found is doing it in a more sociable manner.

The old Foound, as I remember, used an invitation/notification model to help users to organize a meeting. And quite often, I saw a lot of email notifications coming from there.

“I once was lost…”

The new Found, however, works more like an outing/event discovery channel to keep yourself updated with where your friends are going. And if something interesting pops up, you can jump in on the fun — comment, share, or join. The idea behind the new layout is that it triggers conversations, and users are more likely to connect and meet up.

Here is Danny’s explanation:

The new Found takes a more serendipitous approach by helping users share where they are going so their friends can find and meet them easily. We think this is more natural compared to having an invitation model, which was what the old Foound was about.

I tried the app and the design looks quite good. But I can’t comment much on its function since I have a miserable number of friends so far on Found. Because of its social nature, a user will only find it useful when his network is also on Found. We saw a similar problem highlighted by Guyi Shen in his lean start-up article here. In short, there are multiple problems for Danny and his team to solve. Getting users and their friends on board is one major challenge.

As someone who loves to organize meet-ups with friends, I understand the pain of organizing outings. And Found might very well have found the solution to tackle the problem (no pun intended). And while its first app wasn’t intuitive enough to impress its first batch of excited users, the team seems to have responded well by introducing this relaunch. There must have been some tough decision during that whole process, I’m sure.

If you have a Singapore iTunes account, you can download Found’s iPhone app here (iTunes link) to give it a test. And fyi, for Foound users, you can still use your old account details to log in to the new Found.