Let's Get Started content is usually free or under $25, the way it makes a profit is it offers businesses in-app advertising by converting its users into customers and using notifications to introduce them to a business. Heazlewood says this method has b

We’ve all been there before: when traveling to a new side of town, or even further afield to a new city or country, we want to get out and explore, but we’re faced with the task of trawling various trip advising sites, Google and collecting word-of-mouth from friends and family on what experiences might tickle our fancy. It’s a time-consuming process, which led 24-year-old Romer founder Emily Heazlewood to ask, ‘what if this could be streamlined?’

Heazlewood founded Romer to explore just that in 2017 and has been scaling it ever since. Dubbed ‘Tinder for activities’, it’s a socially curated and crowdsourced app which helps match its users to experiences curated by other users, which they can then share with their friends and family.

It works by listing the activities and events based on a person’s location and in a Tinder-like style, users can swipe left to dismiss them or swipe right to like them.

Heazlewood says its point of difference when compared to other players in the market, such as Trip Advisor or Yelp, is the experiences are distilled down to very specific topics, rather than just naming venues or places to go.

“The trend that Romer is tapping into is the experience economy, so it's doing more with your spare time,” she says. “It's not about places, it's about experiences so instead of saying, ‘Go to this bar' it's saying, ‘here is one of the best cocktails in Auckland, trusted by locals, shared to other locals and tourists.’

“Google Maps won’t tell you where to watch a good sunset, Trip advisor isn’t matched to you – our goal is using artificial intelligence to understand each user and not in a bad way – if you select child-friendly things, you can make new suggestions, and that’s hugely changed our engagement. We get three or four times more engagement through more personalised suggestions.”

Heazlewood developed the idea while working in the property industry. She had an idea for two businesses: one related to property, and the other being Romer. She decided to take the riskier path.

“I chose Romer – and in that moment, it was a bit crazy because it was a house deposit to start. But I thought, ‘What’s the worst that could happen?’” she says.

But the entrepreneurial streak has been alive in her for a while. She says she can remember when she was a 13-year-old, she spent her weekends jumping on the trampoline thinking up business ideas.

“I’ve seen a lot of people go, ‘I want to start a start-up, I just need to come up with an idea’ but no, it goes the other way – it starts with, ‘I’ve got this pain point I need to solve, here’s my start-up I’m creating to fix it’,” Heazlewood says.

Heazlewood built Romer with the help of Christchurch-based Smudge Apps and the support of the Vodafone Xone Lab. It has now expanded to four cities: Christchurch, Auckland, Wellington and Melbourne.

The app offers more than 5500 experiences to do on the app currently and of March, has had more than 45,000 downloads. The content featured on the app is user generated and seeded in each city pre-launch – for example, Heazlewood spent seven days in Melbourne trying out 100 different adventures around the city to feature. It launched with 5000 users.

“It’s our third biggest city now, after Christchurch and Auckland,” she says. “It proved in a heartbeat it was so cheap and easy for us to grow the company. Also, that was the best trip I’ve been on in my life. For me, I was not going to stop until I could use this tool when traveling myself. The passion for finding these cool, niche places is what’s driving it.”

While Romer’s best performing

Google Maps won’t tell you where to watch a good sunset, Trip advisor isn’t matched to you – our goal is using artificial intelligence to understand each user and not in a bad way – if you select child-friendly things, you can make new suggestions, and that’s hugely changed our engagement.

both to do, based on their preferences.

It’s also looking to introduce ‘minitrips’ that will be an itinerary to follow around that particular city. She says in Auckland, this could look like ferrying to North Head, then jumping in an Uber to Takapuna Beach Café to have their deconstructed hot chocolate, followed by a walk on the beach.

“People don’t want to think – there’s so much noise and people have such busy lives, so you want to be told, ‘here’s a good idea, go do it.’ Having a bit of authority is good,” she says.

“The vision for Romer and the behaviours we want to see or what we want to impact is seeing people do more with their spare time: stay-athome Mums having amazing places to take their kids, dating to make it a lot more personalised, fast and smart and then also just seeing people do more with their afternoon, so finishing work and actually going on a new adventure.”