When Sarah Hostyk was in college, she stayed up late location-hopping to find a suitable place to study, only to end up in the library when it was quiet at 1 a.m.
“I realized this was an issue,” she said. “You should be able to find places and not have to waste time and energy.”
After her first full-time job for a mobile app startup in Israel, she worked remotely for other startups in Boston. She couldn’t find a good place to pull up her laptop and enjoy quiet seating and Wi-Fi, and working from home could be distracting.
A D.C.-area native, Hostyk returned in 2016 with a problem and a plan. She had been saving money since she was 16 to launch a tech startup, and saw this as a perfect opportunity to try her hand.
She bootstrapped her new app, Rockville-based Place Tempo, starting with research and development in 2016 leading to a 2017 soft launch. The app takes a user’s preferences and real-time location data to find the best nearby places to work or study.
Its soft launch last year focused on remote workers and students, generating about 800 users, but launches this fall at Georgetown University and UMD College Park have added 125 users per week, Hostyk said. It’s not limited to the two campuses – work/study spots are available on the app throughout D.C.
Based on user needs, Place Tempo recommends university buildings and nearby spots like lounges and restaurants depending on historical data at that time of day.
“Sometimes it’s ones you wouldn’t think of, like a pizza place at 4 p.m., she said. "Near Georgetown, a pizza place can be really quiet and empty at the right times.”
On the other side of the app, local businesses that have listed work/study locations can offer promotions through Place Tempo that work similarly to a punch card. Users are prompted to review the spot in real-time while using the promotions, which feeds data to the app to improve accuracy and increases foot traffic to venues at off-peak hours.
Prior to launching this fall, Hostyk took Place Tempo through the Startups Ignite accelerator in Northern Virginia and also won a $2,500 third-place prize at the USPAACC 2018 What’s Your Pitch startup competition in Bethesda.
