In Conversation with Jon Petersen, co-founder of buUuk

buUuk is a mobile-web application developed to be the indispensable guide to food and drinks using a location based framework. Currently in both iPhone and Google Android, the app has been making headway with their latest augmented reality feature that can help a consumer to locate their restaurant or bar in the vicinity which they are in. Who’s behind this? Jon Petersen, also known for his work in SinGeo, a digital site dedicated on visualizing Singapore on maps, started BuUuk with the intention to help consumers to find food and drinks nearby. So, we make an appointment with Jon Petersen and interviewed him on the story behind buUuk, the interesting features that make the app tick, their latest feature on augmented reality in the app and finally, tips on which app store you should go for.

BL: Hi Jon, great to have you here on SGE. What did you do before working on buUuk?
Jon Petersen: I worked for 18 years for SPSS, a US software company, and for the last few years with them I was responsible for their Asia/Pac business, based first in Tokyo and then Singapore. That was pretty much enough of working for other people, so I decided to setup my own business focussing on the growing use of geo data.

BL: What inspired you to come up with buUuk and is it based on your experience with SinGeo?
Jon Petersen: buUuk was a natural extension of the stuff I was working on with SinGeo. Along came this device (the iPhone) that finally enabled developers to make geo data much more contextually relevant. SinGeo was oriented around mapping data on the desktop, which is pretty neat but also a somewhat dumb way to present geographic information, as there’s an important missing piece, which is the user’s location. That’s changing slowly with a new generation of browsers that can be made location aware but the emergence of smart-phones with location abilities is the real game changer. Not only do we now know the user’s location, so can present them with information in the context of their current location, but the user has the device with them while they’re on the move. Geo data is kind of useful when you’re mobile ;)

We chose food and drink as the domain in which to build buUuk because it has such wide appeal and because it’s an industry which faces the problem of having a product which degrades over time, I don’t mean the food itself, but the seat in the establishment. If a restaurant had empty seats last night, those seats have gone and their value cannot be realised. If restaurants could have a way to get the word out in real-time to potential customers in their vicinity then they can mitigate this problem. At the same time we believe that consumers would welcome a way of receiving interesting promotions from restaurants in their vicinity, offering food that matches their preferences.

BL: Can you briefly tell us about BuUuk app and what does it do for the consumers as a location based service to source for restaurants within a vicinity?
Jon Petersen: buUuk runs on the iPhone and Android devices and allows users to find food and drink, either within their vicinity or at a location that they’re planning to be at. But eating and drinking is a very social activity so a natural extension of buUuk’s location-aware directory functionality is to allow users to interact with each other and their friends in the context of food. So buUuk allows rating and reviewing of restaurants and has a forum and integrates with Twitter and Facebook to allow easy sharing of information. In addition, food and drink establishments are very dynamic, they are constantly, opening, closing and changing, we’ve built some crowd-sourcing facilities into buUuk that allow us to present all the latest information.

BL: What are the three most interesting features on buUuk application that you like users to know about?
Jon Petersen: We’re having a lot of fun with Augmented Reality in the latest release of buUuk on the iPhone. This allows us to superimpose over the phones screen information about restaurants currently within the view of the phones camera. As well as being a great demo feature, this allows us to give our “geographically challenged” users an alternative to the traditional map view for navigation. Secondly, we’ve just released a stealth feature which is a game we’re calling “Maitre d’”, it allows users to accumulate points (buUcks) by buUuking in to locations that they visit. We’re not exactly sure where this is going to lead, but it should be a lot of fun finding out. Finally, we’ll be adding push notification to the next release of buUuk, this should make it a lot easier for users to interact in real-time without having to constantly start up the app.

BL: buUuk started off with you bootstrapping the entire operation without much funds at your disposal. What are the lessons that you think are important in bootstrapping an operation like this?
Jon Petersen: The most important lessons have been in how to prioritise spending to expedite speed to market. Deciding which constraints need some money throwing at them is a constant challenge.

Another lesson we’ve learned is that a small organization can achieve a lot of bang for its buck if its involved in a space which is under disruption and has some large players. The mobile space is under enormous disruption at the moment and the Telco carriers and device manufacturers are looking for any leverage they can get, we’re happy to be a lever provided we get something in return ;)

BL: What are the possible revenue models to monetize buUuk?
Jon Petersen: As I described earlier, we think there’ll be a demand from suppliers of a decaying product for a service which allows them to promote their offerings in real-time to potential customers near them. And we think consumers will be open to receiving such contextually relevant promotions. We’ve got a few ideas about how this can be monetized, but our focus currently is 100% on building our user base. Without a sizeable user base we have nothing to monetize.

BL: Are they any new features which we will be seeing on buUuk with respect to the augmented reality?
Jon Petersen: Initially our focus will be on improving the usability, based on feedback from the first version of Augmented Reality which has only just been released. Further down the line we’ll try to build Augmented Reality into some of the other enhancements we have planned for buUuk, such as recommendation engine we’ve been working on. Also, it would be pretty cool one day to be able to use Augmented Reality to see if any of your friends are in the restaurants around you.

BL: Given that there are many apps store like Android Market, Ovi Store and Apple iTunes, what is a good strategy for developers to work on in distributing their app across these stores?
Jon Petersen: I think the answer to this lies in answering the question of which devices to develop for, and that decision is a difficult one. Most mobile developers are still, like us, pretty small and the mobile market is very fragmented and very fast changing. We’ve decided up to now to focus on the iPhone and Android platforms. The iPhone was a no brainer, Android is interesting because of the sheer range of devices from multiple manufactures that will appear over the next few months. As for developing for RIM, Nokia and Windows Mobile, that’s a conversation we have every week…..

BL: What are the three most important traits of an entrepreneur?
Jon Petersen: Self belief, a regular supply of caffeine and an understanding spouse.

BL: Jon, thanks for the interview. Good luck with buUuk, and we hope to see more interesting features on the app with augmented reality.

Related Video: Check out the augmented reality feature for buUuk in YouTube.

Related Links:
[1] Young Upstarts, A Brief Interview with Jon Petersen of buUuk.com.
[2] Check out the latest development of buUuk in their blog.

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