Marcus Smith started building Moooves in 2022 with a futuristic idea: using augmented reality to help people meet others and discover places in the real world. Like Pokémon Go, but for real-world connection.
Advances in tools like artificial intelligence, along with growing concerns about privacy in location-based apps, reshaped how the platform works and what it’s meant to do, Smith told Technical.ly.
What began as a networking concept gradually expanded into a system designed for venues, events and businesses to create their own interactive experiences in physical spaces. Today, users on Moooves can check in to a location and interact through augmented reality messages tied to that site.
Someone standing outside a restaurant, for example, could open the app and see promotions or interactive features, from limited-time deals and rewards to branded experiences.
In this edition of How I Got Here, Smith talks about how Moooves evolved, how advances in AI helped make the platform possible and why he believes technology should bring people deeper into the real world, not further away from it.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
How did AI change what was possible for Moooves?
Back in 2022, a lot of the augmented reality software didn’t exist, or it wasn’t accessible in the way I needed it. By trade, I knew front end, but I didn’t know back-end code, so I was trying to bootstrap and build a rudimentary version just to get to the point where I could hire developers.
Then the AI and augmented reality tech caught up. That’s really what changed everything. The tools became available in a way where I could actually build what I was trying to build.
It went from being something people didn’t fully understand to something that was actually possible to execute. Once that happened, I knew I wasn’t stopping.
You’re headquartered in Delaware. Why?
For a while, I thought I was going to leave. I remember thinking it just wasn’t working here. Whenever I left Delaware, people understood the idea right away. But I’m from here, and I kept trying to figure out how to make it work here.
What changed was getting involved in the ecosystem. Through the New Castle County Chamber, the iDEa Lab, the Finech Innovation Hub and CAFE, I met people who helped me structure the company and gave me space to build.
At the FinTech Innovation Hub, being in that environment made a difference. I was in the space constantly, building and working through the product, and getting feedback from people around me.Programs like CAFE also helped me think differently about how to build the company and what the opportunity could be.
People say Delaware isn’t a place to build a startup, but there are people here building things and helping others do the same. For me, that made a big difference.
What were some of the biggest challenges along the way?
There were a lot of stops and starts. I was dealing with personal loss and other challenges while I was trying to build the company. There were times when I had to step away and regroup.
At one point, I was really struggling and thinking maybe people just weren’t going to get all this futuristic stuff. Maybe I had to go into some other vertical, whether that was AI education or another way to help companies. But once I got back into the community and kept building, things started to shift. We went from an obscurity problem to an overload problem. We now have too much interest.
Turns out I was just too early.
What’s next for Moooves?
Right now we’re focused on growing the user base and continuing customer discovery. We’re live as a web app, and one of the biggest pieces of feedback we get is that people want to be able to fully download it as a mobile app. So that’s one of the next steps.
We’re also in the early stages of raising money and talking with potential partners. There are early conversations happening around places with a lot of foot traffic, like sports venues, events, hotels and other places where people gather.
From the user side, we know people need it. From the business side, they know they need it. We’ve gotten a lot of positive feedback. Now it’s about how we take that feedback and turn it into revenue.
What do you wish more people understood about what you’re building?
A lot of people think I built this to get away from the real world. For me, it’s the opposite. It’s about being out in the real world, going to real places, talking to people. It’s not an escape from all of that.
It’s using technology to impact the world around you, instead of letting technology around you impact your world
