Shanna Liu is an experienced leader with 10+ years of strategy and operating experience in scaling B2C startups. Most recently she led strategy & development at unicorn startup Stash, where she helped build its integrated platform, in the process doubling subscribers, tripling ARPU, and raising $300M in capital. She was previously a consultant at McKinsey and has an MBA from The Wharton School.
Currently, she serves as the CEO and co-founder of Seek, a unique app set to launch later this fall that lets the user find trusted recommendations from like-minded influencers local to their area. It is financially backed by three investors that were among the first to invest in Facebook.
FWM: What is Seek?
Seek is a content platform that connects consumer leisure influencers, or “curators” (i.e. whiskey bar connoisseurs, art museum experts, music festival insiders), with the millions of consumers looking for trustworthy and relevant recommendations for where to eat, drink, and hang from experts with similar taste. Consumers get an advisory board of in-the-know tastemakers across different niches and expertises for recs on different types of consumer leisure they are interested in. Curators are finally able to showcase their expertise and knowledge and eventually monetize through premium subscriptions, giving consumers their most exclusive recs or useful products such as personalized audio guides and in-person experiences. We are launching in NYC and from there we will expand to the rest of the US and the world!
FWM: How is Seek different from other review platforms? How and why did you come up with the concept?
Pre-COVID, I was on a trip to Barcelona and realized that it was impossible to find information on local bars that I was sure I would enjoy. All the reviews on review sites were generic and not written by someone with my interests and I wasted hours looking for things to do and felt like I missed out on a lot of cool events. The same thing happens at home in NYC – I always wanted to have an easy way to look up recommendations and inside tips for various things like bookstores, pop-ups, cocktail bars depending on the occasion from real life people in the know whom I trust. I wanted to create an app to help people save time and have a good time. Seek is not a review platform. Rather, it’s a place where curators showcase their top and most interesting recommendations – it’s not a trash can of crazy or negative reviews but curated content that is useful and relevant – it is elevated, trustworthy and useful.
Each curator is vetted by the Seek team through a vigorous interview process. The curators are already proven influencers and experts in their niches with content followers love (i.e. one girl is an expert on tea shops and another guy on secret subway art). 90% of Gen Z trust their favorite influencers’ recommendations as much as those of family and friends and 70% of Gen Z already follow at least one influencer so there is strong customer demand for these tips from these influencers/curators. Each recommendation is vetted by Seek to ensure quality – curators only have their top 15-20 recs for NYC in there. Each recommendation also has unique tags you don’t find anywhere else, such as “public bathroom available”, “attractive people”, “420 friendly” as well as secret tips, such as best times to go, off the menu items, and little known histories.
FWM: Take us through the platform.
First thing when you come onto Seek, you are surfaced with suggested curators for you to follow based on the vibes that you provide us in registration (i.e. fashionista, hipster, thrill seeker). You can also explore trending curators on Seek. Follow the curators you like to stay on top of their recs. On the recs tab, you can explore all your cuators’ recs as well as recs that are trending on Seek, both in a list view and a map view. There is a powerful search feature you can use to search by category of recs, location, and/or one of our 300 unique tags. You can save the recs you love all in one place (Favorites) and categorize them into categories that are relevant to you. Finally, we have a cool feature called “Roulette” where random recs from across Seek are surfaced to you that you can swipe to save or reject – a fun little game for discovering new places and also helps our algo surface more curators and recs for you that you may like in the future!
FWM: Give us examples of how Seek can be used.
So many!
- Finding the perfect date spot to impress your girlfriend
- Finding where cute boys are hanging out on a Friday night (by searching for “cute boys” tag and look at the recs of influencers you know have your taste :))
- Finding a hidden rooftop for a night out by following one of our fashionistas in the know on all things exclusive and bougie
- Finding some cool street art your friend group wouldn’t know about by following a street artist for his recs
FWM: I see that Seek is financially backed by three investors that were among the first to invest in Facebook. How did you get such prominent investors on board?
My co-founder Giff and I worked at fintech unicorn Stash before starting Seek. The founders of Stash are phenomenal and good friends of ours and introduced us to a few consumer and fintech VCs and the word spread from there.
The influencer economy is huge but it’s just the beginning. There is so much opportunity to help influencers grow their hobbies into businesses and monetize their expertise through paid subscriptions from their followers if they can provide value (rather than just peddle other people’s products through paid ads). The VCs see this as a good time to invest in influencers and the influencer economy.
Recent research shows that a minimal amount of venture capital money goes to female-led startups in the United States. Did you experience these challenges and if so, how did you overcome them?
Definitely agree that we need to continue to create equal opportunities for all, especially in VC and tech, where women are still very much underrepresented, especially as founders.
I have focused my energy on believing in my idea and trusting our team in the pitches. I am passionate and proud of the concept and of our team and I think that shows in our conversations with VCs. The most important things VCs look for, regardless of gender of founder, is an interesting idea and a passionate team. We have been fortunate to work with 6 exceptional VCs who believe in us and what we are doing.
The entertainment, nightlife, restaurant, and hospitality industries have been particularly impacted by COVID. Businesses in these industries seem to be the ones that will be heavily recommended through Seek? As the virus continues to surge, do you expect Seek to be an asset for both businesses and users? If so, how?
Absolutely! For the businesses, we want to be a way to help small businesses since they have been hit so hard by Covid. Seek is actually the perfect app for small businesses to get traction. Historically, one or two publications like Michelin controlled which places were deemed “the best”. Now with the influencer economy, any small hole in the wall or little known establishment can be big if an influencer shouts them out to his or her followers.
In addition, for the consumers, we realized that people still want to enjoy life but in a safe manner until COVID dies down. This is why we have a tag called “COVID conscious” on the app and many influencers provide useful tips on what the COVID protocols are at various establishments. This way, people will have a way to know whether they would be comfortable going to a particular location.
FWM: What is your vision for Seek?
For the consumers, we want people to be able to discover interesting places and have rewarding leisure experiences by getting in-the-know recs, tips and experiences from experts with similar tastes as them and who they trust. For the curators, our platform is a way to showcase their experience and turn a hobby into a business by monetizing their amazing knowledge. For the businesses, Seek is the perfect medium for the best and brightest to shine and find and engage with an audience most interested in what they are offering. In addition, we want to facilitate easy payment between consumers, curators, and businesses so all three can focus on what they want to do: enjoy, recommend, and entertain, respectively.
Our vision is for every consumer leisure decision and payment to happen within Seek.
