Vurb

Vurb positioned itself as a contextual search engine designed to streamline the mobile user experience by integrating information and services from various applications into a single interface. The company was founded in 2011 by Bobby Lo, an entrepreneur with a background in computer science and management from MIT and previous experience co-founding the search advertising firm Yodle. Lo's vision was to move beyond the traditional list of blue links in search results and address the fragmented nature of mobile tasks, where users often jump between multiple apps to plan an outing, like finding a movie, booking tickets, and arranging a ride.

The Vurb application, which launched on iOS in early 2015 and Android later that year, aimed to solve this by presenting information in summarized, shareable 'Cards'. These Cards aggregated content from partners like Yelp, Foursquare, Rotten Tomatoes, and Google Maps, allowing users to perform actions such as reading reviews, making reservations, or booking a ride with services like Uber directly within the Vurb app. Users could collect these Cards into 'Decks'—curated, shareable lists for planning activities or creating bucket lists with friends. The platform's business model included passive monetization through referral fees from partners when a transaction was initiated through the app. Vurb's target market was general mobile users looking for a more efficient way to search, plan, and organize social activities.

A significant milestone for the company was winning the TechCrunch Disrupt NY Startup Battlefield in 2014, which brought considerable attention. The company secured over $10 million in funding from notable investors including Redpoint Ventures, Tencent, Max Levchin, and Drew Houston. In August 2016, Snap Inc. acquired Vurb for approximately $110 million, a deal composed of stock and cash. Following the acquisition, the Vurb app was discontinued as the team and its technology were integrated into Snap to work on features like Context Cards, leveraging Vurb's approach to surfacing relevant content and actions within Snapchat.

Keywords: Vurb, Bobby Lo, mobile search engine, contextual search, app aggregation, deeplinking, Snap acquisition, TechCrunch Disrupt winner, Vurb Cards, activity planning, recommendation engine, social search, content aggregation, mobile user experience, app integration, shareable lists, Yelp integration, Foursquare integration, Rotten Tomatoes integration, Uber integration