Exclusive Interview with Jason LaBaw, CEO and founder of Social Bee

Social Bee is a platform where tour guides and travel enthusiasts can create self-guided tours and scavenger hunts for tourists to consume for a fee, or for free. Analytics Insight has engaged in an exclusive interview with Jason LaBaw, CEO and founder of Social Bee.

1. Kindly brief us about the company, its specialization, and the services that your company offers.

Social Bee is a platform where tour guides and travel enthusiasts can create self-guided tours using interactive elements for tourists to consume for a fee or for free. The idea is to provide a local experience without the tour guide necessarily being present. Through the use of AR technology, travelers have the opportunity to discover a destination on their own with additional virtual information, videos, and games created by a knowledgeable tour guide.

2. With what mission and objectives, the company was set up? In short, tell us about your journey since the inception of the company?

We started out by building scavenger hunts like social contests for companies. We kept hearing from participants that it was such a fun adventure for the family and that's when the light bulb went off. 

What if we could build a platform that lowered the barrier to entry for someone to be a tour guide? What if we could create a scavenger hunt? Our goal was to create a greater diversity of experiences and adventures while at the same time building a digital marketplace where creators could make money for their tours and experiences. 

Our mission is to inspire people all over the world to get out there and explore. We want to make discovering the world as fun and immersive as playing a video game. That's where augmented reality comes in. We found AR to be a great way to engage and provide context to what the person consuming the experience is looking at. For instance, with Social Bee's AR capabilities, we can place a point of interest in the top left-hand corner of, for example, the Mona Lisa so that tourists consuming the tour can see the information specific to that painting.

3. Kindly mention some of the major challenges the company has faced till now.

Our biggest challenges lie in tech development itself. Bleeding edge tech is fickle. One day it's publicly available. The next day, it's purchased by one of the big 3 and no longer available for use. 

AR Best practices and standards are still being defined. What's the best way to present textual information in AR? What about videos? Or even buttons? How do you handle various viewport (screen) sizes, and what if the user is too close to the digital content vs. too far away?

This means that we need to constantly work on developing our application further by assessing, re-working, and improving our solution. It requires a lot of resources and team effort – but is worthwhile when looking at the results.

4. How are disruptive technologies like IoT/Big Data analytics/AI/Machine Learning/Cloud Computing impacting today's innovation?

In a BIG way! AR is a collection of AI technologies that consist of things like computer vision, object classification, and real-time graphics rendering to make digital content appear as if it actually exists in the physical space. 

Good AR apps make use of adjacent technologies like: 

• Speech technologies to provide a more hands-free experience
• Natural language processing makes content available in many languages.

All of which provide the necessary tools to create greater engagement and spark interest in different users.

5. Which industry verticals are you currently focusing on? And what is your go-to-marke strategy for the same?

Our main domain is, unsurprisingly, travel and tourism. Our go-to-market strategy is to focus on the Seattle Market, proving the model out there and expanding our geographic footprint from there. We're initially focusing on reaching creators, tour guides, travel influencers, and the like. As we gain more content, we'll turn our focus to consumers. So, it's about going step by step and starting with exploring one single realm entirely first.

6. What are some of the challenges faced by the industry today?

Have you ever heard of the phone paradigm? These devices allow us to do so many things, but the phone screen is small, and viewing the AR world through a phone isn't ideal. I believe this will all change with the adoption of consumer-grade AR glasses.

The pandemic is changing the way people travel

The pandemic has evoked in us that we don't want to travel in large groups – but this was an ongoing trend already before. The more people around you, the less unique and authentic your travel experience will be. Imagine you visit a place like Machu Pichu in Peru – with 30 other tourists in your travel group. It's just not the same experience, as you won't be able to ask the questions you want, and it's much less of an intimate experience.

As people may not be able to travel – either because of the pandemic but also because of the costs and time necessary for traveling – many are now starting to explore the area around where they live. Here, AR is ideal for building new adventures in a known environment.