Knowers Travel

Knowers was founded by Laurence Newman in May 2017. This is Laurence’s second startup, after he co-founded a successful finTech company in 2013. Knowers’ mission, is to create an authentic and powerful travel experience for a new generation of travellers. By connecting urban explorers instantly to local connoisseurs (Knowers) that want to become the champions of their cities by helping out travellers.

The Israeli company developed an alpha application for Android devices and launched their first mobile version in Tel-aviv, where they conducted their experiences and research. On the platform, you can ask any question you want (before or during you trip) and get instant answers from relevant, knowledgeable locals.

Addressable market – Next generation travellers

Globally, millennial travellers constitute around one-fifth of international tourists and generated annual tourism revenue of US$180 billion in 2016. Conservative estimations evaluate the millennial tourism market in Europe alone as a $40 Billion annual market. About three-fifths of the world’s millennials are from Asia and out of this cohort, 33% are from India or China.  

Knowers is currently focused on building a strong question and answer infrastructure for the travel world. Once product market fit is achieved and the community grows, the platform will turn into a thriving marketplace and recommendation engine.

The development needed is composed of:

-Automatic data collection software
-Automatic recommendation engine and machine learning algorithms
-NLP and Social media listening tools

Server and Client, Android application, IOS application and Web platform  

Knowers is in charge of the product (the mobile applications and web platform), which are planned, structured and developed here in Israel. We conduct surveys, do experiments and A B testing in order to decide what features we want to develop and in the second stage, will decide which features are worth keeping and which ones to leave out.

As we need to be as quick and productive as possible in these stages and in direct contact with the end users, we think it would be best to keep the product development and client side of the application in one place, here in Israel. Where on the other hand, all the learning algorithms and matching systems are behind the scenes, and are separate developments that don’t necessarily need to be directly connected to the end user. Therefore, I think it would be a perfect project to cooperate with a company that specializes in the field. They would have full access to the back end, the server side, where they can see all the users and data and run all the tests needed to build strong, accurate matching algorithms.

The company proposes to develop:

-The server and client sides for the Android application, IOS application and Web platform.

Companies that specialize in machine learning algorithms, especially in NLP (Natural Language Processing) and Classification, such as:

Dentsu Aegis Network
KAI Square Pte Ltd
Mustard Technology Pte Ltd

Ref:0718