Peekaboo Mobile- Never Miss A Great Deal

Peekaboo Mobile is an app designed for Apple users, specifically, and uses their GPS location to send them deals and offers at retail stores close to them. I had the opportunity to connect with Michael Fruzzetti and Ben Dolgoff, co-founders of this app. This app merges the features of two of the most popular ideas at the time- local coupons, and GPS- based solutions. 

It's no surprise that since their launch on the Apple App Store in early March, 2010, Peekaboo has quickly amassed 400 users of the service in the Boston area. More importantly - they have secured relationships with around 65 businesses such as Beacon Hill Athletic Club, The Good Life, and Boston Common Coffee, who use Peekaboo's online coupon management system to post deals and offers directly to the Peekaboo community. 

As COO Dolgoff shares, "things like Groupon are a 'thought-out buy.' You need to be in front of your computer and make the purchase online. Peekaboo Mobile is all about 'real time deals’.” In short, Peekaboo stands out for offering ‘immediate’ and ‘convenient’ suggestions, emerging as a useful tool for businesses as well as individual consumers alike. All a user needs to do is open up the app whenever they wish, and find all the offers close to where they are at any moment. 

Businesses, alternatively, have the power to directly publish coupons and deals on the Peekaboo platform via its coupon management system, with the potential of boosting traffic in the store and driving up sales. The hyper personalization of suggestions based on the current location of a person are a significant step-up offered by the app. For tech-savvy audiences that wish to make the most of their time and stay current about the best deals around them, this app has come out as the answer they had been looking for, all along. 

The Dynamic Duo Behind Peekaboo

With a background in Finance, his initial career path put Fruzzetti on Wall Street as a trader, before returning to Boston, reconnecting with fellow Suffolk graduate Dolgoff and forming an umbrella company ByteVentures that they have used to create several internet businesses. Peekaboo Mobile is their fourth venture together, demonstrating the duo’s capacity and keen eye for identifying emerging market trends and capitalizing on them by leveraging their exceptional business acumen.

Soon into the journey with Peekaboo Mobile, they realized that they are under stiff competition from the many "groupon-clones," as well as New York-based Postabon, which recently secured a $1.05 million round from Spark Capital and has presence in Boston, New York, and San Francisco. But, the Peekaboo duo feel they have a strategic advantage when it comes to the competition - the thriving, vibrant, and helpful community that surrounds entrepreneurs here in Boston. 

Their community-driven outlook has not only allowed them to achieve exceptional early success with Peekaboo, but also enabled them to set the stage for long-term success of the firm. 

Plans for Expanding 

Currently housed in the entrepreneurial frat house HangOut Labs, and planning to secure angel or seed funding from one of the many startup competitions such as Mass Challenge, both Fruzzetti and Dolgoff are supremely optimistic on their future outlook. 

They have ambitious plans to bring their currently offshore development team in-house, and expand to other cities in the near future. As Dolgoff explains, "there really is a community here. People who actually want to help. We will expand to other cities, but our homebase will always be here in Boston." 

Learning

The development and growth trajectory of Peekaboo Mobile is proof of how there is a lot of potential for entrepreneurs and startups to take on existing ideas and technologies, perhaps merge multiple, and create something that is unique in its own way.