My Weblog

Founded by four recent graduates of the University of Washington, Spottago is an online service that shows apartment listings near college campuses on an online map. It also displays how close those apartments are to bars, restaurants and grocery stores, and offers a business directory and a roommate finder service. The company has raised $100,000 in seed financing and has expanded to over five campuses in the Seattle Area.

In urban environments especially, one of the biggest factors in housing decisions is neighborhood. Location, Location, Location. Spottago does a great job of not only showing you the physical location of apartment listings, but also surrounding local businesses such as bars, restaurants, coffee shops and grocery stores:

Think FlyRig meets PhatDeals. This service is trying to tap the market for targeted local listings (FlyRig) and monetize with local business advertising and coupons. We’ve talked quite a bit about this market and the potential that it is has (According to Lee, 13 million students live off campus, representing a $23 billion market that turns over every year), but we have yet to see

if anybody can pull it off. As we have noted before, selling local advertising is hard to scale because the human capital needed to be on the ground selling is costly. In terms of expansion, the goal is to reach 20 campuses this year and 125 campuses by 2011, with an ad and sales representative on each campus.

The other big question will be: Can they take market share from the big boys such as Craigslist, Move.com, Rentals.com and Rent.com (an eBay company)? It will be crucial for the Spottago team to assemble a Board of Advisors that have experience in scaling online companies, and if possible, Board Members with experience in the local listings market. Spottago has a solid product, but they need to pay mind to execution. We’ll see as things play out over the next year. If successful, Spottago will be filling a big need for many university students across the country, but without rapid expansion, it is my prediction that Spotaggo will not get its legs.

Rate Spottago