Danielle Egan and Athena Leong know how to have fun. Between the two of them, they’ve organized a citywide scavenger hunt in San Francisco and turned a viral prank into an exclusive NYC restaurant for a night. They even created an alternative to a running club for socializing, dubbed a “sit club,” where people just bring their chairs and relax. Now, with their new startup, Outernet, the co-founders want to help others add more fun to their lives, too.
The app’s name is inspired by the concept of using the internet as a tool to get you to go outside, hence “outernet.” It’s one of several apps that helps you save the things you see online — like local events, restaurants or bars to try, or other city landmarks — and turn them into a list of to-dos for exploring the world around you.
Outernet’s pitch is that instead of simply liking a post about something you’d like to see or do on social media, you should share it to its app, where it will track the activity or place you want to visit for you in an organized interface. (Invite codes to try the app for yourself are at the bottom of this post).
What makes Outernet different from others in the space, like Albo, Tabi, or Plotline, is who’s behind it: founders who have devoted much of their time to playfulness and having fun offline. Now, they want to bring that same spirit into their app.
“In my free time, I’m very passionate about getting people to go outside and do things,” explains Egan, whose offline persona is quite different from her former day job working in product BizOps at LinkedIn. “I just love capturing attention in unexpected ways and delivering delightful things.” She says the thesis behind the app is becoming the “motivation engine for IRL” — something that removes the friction between wanting to do something and actually going out to do it.
Outernet taps into an already common consumer behavior. As you scroll TikTok and Instagram, you’re often inspired by a creator’s post, so you’ll save it in the app as a reminder. But then you promptly forget about the idea as you continue to consume more content. Outernet solves this problem by keeping track of the things you want to do or places you want to visit, all in one place.
To save a post to the app, you’ll tap the share option from the source app, like TikTok or Instagram, then scroll through the list of places you can share to until you find Outernet. You can also paste in social media URLs or website links directly into the app, or upload a photo of something you see, like a flyer.
To organize everything, Outernet leverages AI to pull relevant information, like the date, time, location, and details about the activity you want to try or the location of a place you’d like to visit. Events are saved to a chronological feed, which you can revisit whenever you’re looking for something to do. Other activities without a date, as well as places you’d like to visit, are organized into separate tabs within the app. You can also save events to your Apple or Google Calendar or view them in Outernet’s map.
The app can also send proactive reminders and nudges that encourage you to go do the things you’ve saved.
Then, as you explore places in the real world, you can “stamp” them as such, building what will eventually become a passport documenting your activities.
“We’re thinking of different ways of creating maybe some sort of like passport book where you can look at all the things [you’ve done] and maybe share that with friends and get some sort of sense of pride of that,” Egan says of future product plans. They’re also thinking of using traditional gamification techniques to encourage activity, like giving out stamps when you reach different milestones.
The idea for Outernet came out of the co-founders’ experience designing a citywide scavenger hunt in San Francisco, called “Pursuit,” which began three years ago and is now held annually. The monthlong game drew participation from about 1.5% of San Francisco’s population during its most recent run.
As the founders chatted with participants, they found that people didn’t get involved because they loved scavenger hunts or adventure games; they just wanted an excuse to go outside. This sparked an idea.
“We just realized that people really have an appetite for doing things, like going on adventures. This is the new trend,” notes Leong, whose background is in computer science and child development, before she landed a job in adventure game design.
“There are so many incredible community events, and being community organizers ourselves, we’re very plugged into that scene,” Egan adds. “What’s so hard is there are these boots on the ground — incredible community organizers who are hosting these amazing events, and they just don’t know how to reach people because marketing and grabbing people’s attention is such a different skill set. And that’s something that we are exceptional in. So we see ourselves as the conduit,” she says.
Outernet’s app has been on the market for roughly two months and is already profitable from its premium subscription ($6.99/mo or $39.99/year), which lets you save more items per day. It has around 18,000 users in total, and the team is experimenting rapidly with new ideas.
The founders are now having casual conversations with investors about their next steps, but finding the right fit is key.
“We want to bring on investors — if we do — [who are] people who are really aligned with us,” says Leong. “We’re whimsical, and we have to find investors that match.”
Outernet is invite-only and available on iOS, with an Android waitlist. TechCrunch readers can use the invite code “coffeewalk” to skip the waitlist.
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