22-year-old British entrepreneur Rich Martell – who mirrored Mark Zuckerberg’s experience in almost being sacked from his university for developing a flirting social network – is pivoting his company towards location-based offers. In fact, it’s reminiscent of the Amen app launched at TechCrunch Disrupt SF, though more overtly geared towards monetization than Amen’s more Twitter-like experience.
Martell developed the FitFinder mobile social network for students, renamed Floxx, but has clearly realised that this is a narrow niche and is now working on Spottd, which received approval by Apple over the weekend and is now live on the App Store.
The service, which lets you “share the things you love”, allows users to find deals, events or services via a map. It’s also similar to a 20% project Martell and his team came up which called MapChat.
Martell says he is off to the US later this month to meet VCs. He’s currently backed by former UK Dragons’ Den star Doug Richard.