Skidattl wants to use augmented reality to help people engage with the real world. It’s a story we’ve heard from AR companies before, especially when they find themselves struggling with effects that can be alienated from virtual reality. But instead of metaversal Pokémon chasing creatures down the street, Skidattl aims to use AR “beacons” to show people what’s around them.
Randy Marsden, co-founder of Skidattl, said that once the app is launched, it will be like “bat-signal for fun”.
Anyone can make beacons and anyone can see them. Businesses can set up beacons with a one-hour lifetime to advertise two-for-one coffee deals, movie time or open bowling lanes. People may turn up lights at a music festival to help their friends find them in the crowd. All a user has to do is scan the horizon with their phone, or eventually use AR glasses to see beacons up to 100 yards away, Marsden said.
When Skidattl showed off as part of Battlefield 200 at TC Disrupt last week, the company had an AR beacon on site to show what it might look like.
“You really look at the map and say, ‘What’s next to me?’ You might say. But this drags into the real world,” Marsden told TechCrunch, noting that he’s an Apple graduate and two-time TechCrunch Battlefield finalist for his previous companies — Swype (Technically TC50) and Dryft (Disrupt SF 2013).
Skidattl AR beacons are positioned at real-world GPS coordinates. To find where a user is in relation to that light, Skidattl uses Google’s ARCore Geospatial API, which relies on Street View data.
“When you open the app, it tells you to scan the buildings on the street, and within seconds it knows where you are,” Marsden said. “Then those beacons are anchors; They don’t move.”
When people want to set up beacons at home, Skidattl uses Wi-Fi signals to help pinpoint the location of those beacons.
Skidattl is still in the angel funding stage and alpha technology stage, but the startup hopes to go to market with a freemium business model — meaning it will be free to use, but Skidattl can monetize through premium subscriptions, in-app purchases and affiliate commissions.
Like any new social media app, Skidattl has to contend with the chicken-and-egg problem – if there aren’t too many beacons, no one will want to use it, but without people, there can be no beacons lit. on the application.
“I think we can easily start the commercial sector by giving them free electricity,” Marsden said. “On the client side, getting YouTube and TikTok influencers talking about it, doing ads on TechCrunch and stuff like that. And then if someone’s in the app, we can give them incentives to share with their contacts. are different.)
Skidattl is currently trying to raise $500,000 to complete the minimum viable product and to publicly launch the app in Southwest in March, Marsden said.
