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Hi everyone, I'm Erica, co-founder of doozi! My best friend & I have been building doozi for the past year, and we are based in Ottawa (but spend a fair amount of time in Toronto).
Doozi has 30k videos, and over 4k businesses posted/tagged already in Toronto alone. We created this app to solve our own problem; Tiktok & Instagram aren't optimized for travel discovery. Tripadvisor is outdated and not honest.
Doozi is for 3 kinds of people:
🏨 Business owners: we help businesses in the hospitality get discovered by sending local creators to them to make content
🤳 Creators: we give them opportunities to monetize their content
👋 Travellers/locals: we don't run ads, or allow businesses to pay for priority placement. Authentic video reviews you can trust; see the businesses that are the best, not the one's with the deepest pockets.
Would love your feedback on the app and would also love to connect with more folks in the travel space. :)
👉 Learn more at doozi.app and follow our journey at instagram.com/doozigirls
- Erica
Here's a short intro video from me and my co-founder Jillian:
Hi Erica and Jillian, thanks for sharing doozi with Travel Massive and welcome to the community!
Seriously well done on the app and your launches! Building is the easy bit, but marketing and customer acquisition is the hard part (as you know!) so bravo for getting people together IRL.
A few questions:
What has been one thing that surprised you about building and launching doozi?
What is your "moat" that protects your business from TikTok or IG adding map discovery as a feature?
What cities are you heading to next in your launch strategy? Any international (outside of CA) destinations on your dream list? Perhaps we can connect you with some Travel Massive members in the next city you launch in.
Also, I recommend to head to a Toronto Travel Massive event if it's not too far, they have a great community and you could build some amazing connections for doozi.
Hope this feedback is helpful!
Ian
Hey Ian, thanks for all of this and for the kind words! I'm definitely going to get plugged into the Toronto network (attending the upcoming event on the 18, really stoked for it).
To answer your questions:
Most surprising thing building doozi:
How hungry creators are for a platform like this. We thought it’d be difficult to get them to see the vision & come along for the ride (especially so early) but they’ve been incredibly supportive since day 1. They want a platform that actually helps them get discovered & gets them opportunities to make money doing what they already do (most of them do restaurant reviews & local experience reviews). Doozi connects them to businesses to get paid.
Most against TT/IG:
So I would say... a feature isn't a moat, but what we've built around it is. There are 3 things:
TT and IG are entertainment engines built to keep you scrolling. Doozi is an intent engine; people open it already deciding where to eat, stay, or explore. Bolting a map onto an entertainment feed doesn't change why people are there. Different job entirely.
Second, we're a two-sided marketplace, not a content app. Our real product is the rails connecting creators to local businesses (the campaign builder, the payments, the vetting, the hospitality marketing tools).
TikTok could add a map tomorrow and still wouldn't have a way for a Toronto café to hire three vetted local creators, run a perk, and drive real foot traffic. That's the hard part, and it's what we've spent our time on.
Thirdly, density and trust. We're going city by city on purpose: hundreds of vetted creators, 30,000+ pieces of real local content, no ads, no algorithm gaming the feed. That trust compounds and it's slow to copy. The big guys optimize for time-on-app; we optimize for "I actually found my new favourite spot." We want to be the decision making app.
Next cities:
Toronto's our home base and where we're going deepest first - also building out Vancouver. Next up is New York City (later this year). Would love to get plugged into the Travel Massive community out there too. :)
Wowow this app is really neat! Well done! I am based in Melbourne, but used to live in Toronto, so it was great to see all the spots there. Wishing you all the best following the VAN launch, too!
Thanks so much Casey! And Melbourne is on my list - haven't been out that way yet (made it sooo close in Bali) haha
Your map will be full of amazing spots in Melbs! :)
Well done Erica! I love the idea and as a fellow Canadian start-up founder I'm rooting for you!
Hope to see you at the Toronto event and swap stories between Doozi and Triprecos!
See you there!