Startup secured $12M funding on September 8th, 2024
A large percentage of advertising and overall promotion of places today comes from short videos—TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts.
This shift from traditional review forums makes perfect sense—people find it much easier and more engaging to watch a video than to scroll through endless text reviews online. And if you're lucky, those reviews might have some photos—let alone videos. Meanwhile, short-form videos provide a convenient, familiar format, allowing users to explore a place they found on a map in a much more immersive way.
Core Idea
Atmosfy helps users discover must-visit places by watching short videos about them, created by other users. App was designed for finding cool spots, restaurants, and venues in your city. But over time, users realized that its best use was for travel—helping them figure out where to go in a city they were planning to visit.
Users can save both their own videos and those they like from others in a dedicated section of the app—while keeping them pinned to specific locations on the map. This way, they can store memories of their fun city outings and travels while also keeping track of places they want to visit after watching someone else's video.
The idea was that videos would be uploaded by "random" people at "random" moments—essentially working as a system of user-generated reviews and recommendations. However, over time, the app attracted creators—people who started intentionally visiting new places and posting videos about them. Some simply enjoyed sharing their experiences, while others were professional bloggers covering their hometowns or traveling the world, using Atmosfy to reach new audiences.
As a result, Atmosfy is now actively working to attract more content creators to the platform—helping them grow even faster and bring in even more high-quality content. Atmosfy's target audience is young people, so they’ve been actively working on bringing college and university students into their app. To do this, they’re even recruiting brand ambassadors—students who will promote the app among their classmates and friends. What exactly Atmosfy offers them in return is still unclear.
Fun Facts & Highlights
The startup was founded in 2021, and by 2023, the app had already gained solid traction—users had uploaded 10 million videos about 1 million places across 10,000 cities worldwide. Right now, Atmosfy makes money through ads. But they’re also making moves toward engaging with venue owners, whose places are featured in user-generated videos. So it wouldn’t be surprising if they eventually rolled out direct services like table reservations or ticket sales, similar to what POSH (which we recently wrote about) is doing.
In the current round, Atmosfy raised $12 million. This looks especially impressive considering they secured their previous $10 million funding just at the end of last year. That means they've managed to show rapid growth on the investments they received back then.
Where Are We Runnin'?
The vast majority of people choose products and services based on reviews. And when it comes to visiting a place—almost everyone does. That’s why people are constantly searching online for recommendations on interesting spots. But there’s a catch!
The first problem: people love reading reviews, but hate writing them. New platforms keep popping up, trying to find ways to encourage users to leave more reviews. Take the startup Rex, for example. Its founders realized that people often take photos of places they like—but only a few actually leave reviews about them. So, Rex uses AI to regularly scan users’ phone photos and detect whether a picture could be an implicit recommendation. If it is, the app suggests adding a couple of sentences and posting it. The location is automatically determined using the photo’s embedded geodata.
Another one problem - fake reviews. Many business owners generate fake text reviews for their establishments. So, trusting written reviews is becoming less reliable. And let’s be honest—they're often pretty useless. Photo-based reviews are way better. And video reviews? Even better. Especially if they come from real people with real profiles. Of course, there's no 100% guarantee, but it’s still a lot more trustworthy than a vague text review saying "Cozy place with a nice atmosphere" from a faceless Karen Johnson with no avatar and no other reviews.
Surprisingly, posting a review on a dedicated platform feels way less intimidating than sharing a post on a regular social network. Atmosfy’s founder claims that users upload videos there five times more often than they post on traditional social media. In essence, Atmosfy is like TikTok—but not for entertainment, for decision-making. And that’s yet another sign of how content consumption is evolving. Before, you needed directories, filters, advanced searches, and long text descriptions to find the right place. Now? An endless feed of short videos. And for many, that's more than enough. This shift in information consumption is a trend. And new platforms across various industries are already adapting to it.