sweetspots Interview

Interviewer: Your's truly

Interviewee: Romain Martignier (CEO and co-founder of sweetspots)

If you know me, you know I live for good food. Most of my travel itineraries revolve around the restaurants, cafes, hidden snack stands that I have discovered. In my Vienna guide, half of the recommendations were places to eat! While Instagram and blogs are a great way to discover new spots to eat or drink, it can be hard to dig through the not-so-awesome places to get to the unforgettable restaurant that you will talk about for the rest of your life! Which is why I am so excited to share sweetspots with you! sweetspots is an app that solves this very issue of finding the perfect place to eat out or have a drink with friends.

I got to know sweetpots a few months ago before the app was fully developed and released. They showed me around their new offices and explained the whole concept. Before releasing their app to the public, myself and around twenty other foodies in Vienna were invited to be editors in the app. We have created a TON of spotcasts both in English and German for restaurants, bars, and cafes all around Vienna so there is lots of content for you to explore.

I had the pleasure of interviewing Romain Martignier, the CEO and co-founder of sweetspots (virtually of course ;) stay safe kids). He explains the whole concept far better than I can, so without further ado, please enjoy this exclusive look into the sweetspots story and purpose!

At what point did you realize that you wanted to build your own company?

I was always intrigued by stories of entrepreneurs. I enjoyed those conversations and loved sharing my opinion on whatever idea it was. Seeing some startups flourish over the years made me follow the scene more closely. I developed an entrepreneurial mindset myself, and started bouncing ideas with like-minded friends and colleagues. My co-founder, Chris shared the same traits. We were eager to build a product that works, and more importantly one that people want.

What was your inspiration behind starting sweetspots? Do you have any partners?

Everything began while travelling in Africa. I was sitting on the terrace of a hotel browsing through endless lists of restaurants. A young woman who had probably seen my computer screen and felt my desperation approached me and started recommending spots she loves. While discussing with her, I thought that she was so sympathetic and relatable that it felt natural to trust her tips. I ended up going to some places she recommended and had an amazing time.

This experience made me realize how powerful stories and emotions are. You don’t need to know someone very well to get great recommendations. It is all about how relatable or like-minded that person is.

At that point, I was wondering how we decide for ourselves if someone is relatable or not and found out that voice played a crucial role.

The rest happened quite fast. I knew that existing recommendation platforms like TripAdvisor were focusing on text and star ratings. I also knew that many people dislike these platforms because recommendations you find there are often so meaningless. In fact, people don’t want to get written tips from random people, they want to get inspired by people they can relate to and ultimately trust.

I then talked to a friend of mine, Chris, who had similar experiences, and we decided to start this adventure together!

What challenges have you faced so far that have ultimately led to growth?

One of the greatest challenges we faced is also the most recent one. We were about to launch when we got the news that restaurants in Vienna and other European cities would close their doors for an unknown duration due to covid-19. This totally caught us off guard, like many others in the industry.

Despite the situation, we decided to launch at the end of April. Because of the lockdown we focused on spots that offered pick-up food, coffee-to-go, and cocktails-to-go. This led not only to great early feedback, but also benefited local owners as no other platform was recommending pick-up spots in Vienna. Since then we have seen great interest, and now that most restaurants opened their doors again we hope to keep up the momentum. It feels like our timing couldn’t be better to introduce sweetspots as THE new source of inspiration!

How is the app setup? Will it work like social media?

The setup is very simple. We want to answer a question that we frequently ask ourselves: “Where should we go eat?” That is why our main screen is the Discover screen, where you will find inspiration in the form of voice recommendations from friends and like-minded foodies. We call those “spotcasts” and rank them by popularity and time of creation. A spotcast lasts a maximum of 40 seconds, and everyone can create them. I would like to emphasize that our content is positive only. We are all about recommendations, not reviews. To record a spotcast, you just have to navigate to a spot’s detail page where you will find a record button. On the spot detail page you can also see other information such as directions, website, and the Instagram account of the respective spot.

If you are looking for recommendations from a specific person or foodie from the community, you have to visit the People tab. It shows content creators in your area. We basically differentiate between editors and people you follow e.g., your friends and like-minded foodies. Editors are verified by us personally as they enjoy a great visibility in the app. In fact, everyone can see their profile.

Lastly, the Me tab is your profile. It is a repository of spotcasts you created or saved (i.e., spotcasts from other people), and spots you wish to visit in the future. You can also add information to your profile by writing a bio, linking your Instagram account or blog and adding a profile picture. Creating a compelling profile is a great way to drive people from the app to other domains of yours.

Where is the app available?

The app is free and available for iOS and Android. We are currently covering 13 cities in Austria, Germany and Switzerland.

If you could give three pieces of advice to budding entrepreneurs, what would they be?

Be flexible. Stay positive. Work your butt off.

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A big big thank you to sweetspots for making this interview happen! There are so many great sweetspotters on the app already that have given fantastic recommendations. Now go and download the app even if you don’t live in the areas mentioned, because hello traveling! (When it’s safe of course).

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