Video Archives

Boorah, Inc.

Product Name

Boorah

Market Segment

Consumer

Funding

Seed round: funded by private investors.

Competitors

Citysearch, AOL City Guide, online Yellow Pages

Product Description

Boorah is an innovative search and summarization service that delivers the most relevant and complete information on local businesses to consumers. Using unique Natural Language technology, Boorah sifts through and interprets the millions of reviews, blogs and other pieces of social content about local businesses to generate concise “Zagat-like” summaries, detailed ratings and “best of” lists. With Boorah, consumers get high-quality, speedy answers to questions like: “Which restaurant in Palm Desert is best for my business dinner?”

Market Opportunity

According to Nielsen/NetRatings, 70% of consumers have used the Internet to search for a local service business. Borrell Associates predicts the local online advertising market will grow from $5.8 billion today to $9.5 billion by 2009 (with local search capturing almost half), as consumers move from print Yellow Pages and newspapers onto the Internet. Boorah capitalizes on consumer reviews—what Forrester Research calls collectively the highest-rated shopping tool online— to tap into this market.

Demo Says

Local content services have been driven by a pretty standard model— create a portal for local information and ask the community to comment and recommend. Rather than reinvent the wheel, Boorah fi nds relevant review content, then applies smart algorithms to turn user-generated content into normalized, easy-to-digest reviews. Boorah then integrates fulfillment mechanisms to make user-content actionable—and provide for itself a leveragable business model.