Type Private Founder Dr. Dionne Mahaffey Owner WhereU, LLC | Founded 2015 Headquarters Atlanta, Georgia | |
Industry Local search, online business referrals | ||
WhereU, LLC, is a tech startup located in Atlanta, Georgia’s Sweet Auburn Historic District. It develops and markets The WhereU app and the website, WhereYouCameFrom.Biz which publish crowd-sourced listings and referrals about black-owned businesses. Their business search functionality offers a real-time leaderboard of black owned businesses across categories, ranked by peer-to-peer referral counts.
Contents
History
WhereU was launched during Black History Month on February 15, 2016 by Dr. Dionne Mahaffey, a business psychologist and tech executive. WhereU is a subsidiary of her company, The CPAI Group, Inc., which also debuted The Loyalty Stamp, a mobile rewards app, in 2015. The annual promotional contest, the “Best Of Where You Came From Awards” was created to spread awareness and further amplify the brand of businesses listed on the WhereU app by allowing the public to nominate their favorite and most patronized local businesses.
Features
The directory listings are free to business owners, who provide most of the content, and the website is supported by an advertising business model. Business owners have the option of upgrading to a paid listing to enhance their profile and interact with potential customers. Businesses can also provide online deals and coupons through the site and app. WhereU also offers users the ability to find businesses closest them through geo-location technology. Users can refer trusted businesses to friends and family through the unique patent-pending referral function.
No business reviews
Unlike other business directory apps, WhereU does not allow users to post reviews. The company touts their referral feature as a more solid and proactive way to recommend businesses. The WhereU app’s referral feature is based on the West African Griot tradition of spreading good news by word-of-mouth. They believe a customer's endorsement, earned by trustworthy businesses, is a big level-up compared to a review or rating by stars.
African American buying power
African Americans have buying power of an estimated $1.3 Trillion, and although there are 2.6 million black owned businesses in the United States only two cents of every dollar that an African American spends stays in black communities or goes to black owned businesses. One of the primary reasons for this lack of support for black owned businesses is a lack of access. Consumers do not have a streamlined system for locating goods and services provided by minorities. WhereU aims to assist in addressing this issue by curating as many black owned businesses on the app as possible.