Ask Harvard alumnus Hunter Gaylor what he thinks of daily deal sites Groupon and LivingSocial, and he will likely argue the behemoth brands are no good for anyone. Give him five minutes to explain why, and you will find it hard to disagree.
"We've done a lot of market research," Gaylor said. "Every time [retailers] hear about Groupon and LivingSocial, they kind of cringe."
Groupon keeps 50 percent of the revenues from each coupon deal.
LivingSocial allegedly doesn't enforce its contract.
Downtown Boston-based Howler, however, promises businesses only pay if their promotion works and customers stroll through the door. The emerging startup is bringing the online, pay-per-visit model to the physical world, and providing companies with a way to determine the demographic makeup of consumers in their area.
"We're kind of like a David taking on a Goliath," Gaylor said. "What we're doing is we're trying to disrupt advertising."
Gaylor is co-founding Howler alongside Joseph Viscomi. The two first came up with the concept while at a convention for a biopharmaceuticals company that said it wanted to know where people were within the event. The pair started fiddling with iBeacon, Apple's indoor proximity system, and realized the technology could do far more than put a spotlight on who's in the room; it could also get more people through the door.
Gaylor and Viscomi, along with now four other team members, have been working on the underlying Howler platform for roughly eight months, bootstrapping the startup along the way. With a shared passion for advertising and love of bargains, the startup focused on creating "a more convenient Groupon."
Rather than needing to take the time to visit a daily deals site, Howler sends notifications to users when they are in the immediate vicinity of a promotion they would be interested in. "If you're a vegan, you don't want a sirloin steak ad," Gaylor acknowledged. "We don't spam you."
"We want to be that company that does things better."
The app won't drain your battery either, because it doesn't utilize GPS. Rather, the company uses a Bluetooth low energy location positioning system that isn't an energy suck. Given the app "Howls" at users when they're near an opportunity, it also isn't a time suck and allows users to stop wasting their time online looking for deals.
The company is currently in beta with more than 60 Boston stores, and will probably be in 75 by the end of the week, according to Gaylor, who said they plan to launch in August. Luckily for partners, if 100 people walk by one of those stores, but only 50 receive the Howl and walk in, companies will only be charged for that 50 bringing business.
What's more, Howler is able to determine who those 50 people are, and businesses can use the startup's real-time feedback dashboard to adjust advertisements to capture a more relevant audience. Moving forward, when Howler is at scale, Gaylor said he could see real estate companies being interested in the data, because they can determine the type of people walking down a given street. Should a doughnut shop go in an empty storefront, or a new Mexican chain?
Gaylor said the team is in current conversations with some VCs right now, but that they are looking for the right investor who sees the future.
"Right now, our big thing is: We want to be that company that does things better," Gaylor explained. "And if we do things better, the industry will require we do things bigger."
And Howler will, once they do right what Groupon and LivingSocial have gotten wrong.
Image via Howler
