The brains behind visitalocal – Nick Silk and Geraldine Calpin – came up with the idea last summer while setting up their marketing consultancy C&S Marketing.
‘We needed somewhere to meet as we are both home-based,’ said Silk. ‘We chose a town between us, but then couldn’t find anywhere. There were pubs, but we didn’t know whether they were open: we needed maps, and so on.’
The site will enable users to enter their criteria for venues for social events and business meetings, and will draw revenue from sponsorship and online registration fees.
The dot.com start-up can expect some £15,000-worth of IT support from business-incubator.com – a consortium of Oracle, Cisco Systems, Exodus and Sun Microsystems.
Calpin and Silk, who between them have over 30 years of marketing experience in the hotel and restaurant sector, say that getting the site known and attracting funding are the next big issues.
The visitalocal.com website is not yet live.