Tell a tourist where to go: Scoozii wants to make you a concierge

Clay Richardson and his now-wife dated long distance for a while. At the time she was living in London while he was based in D.C., but she often traveled to Boston so they’d meet up there.
Once, after they’d already visited Boston several times, Richardson found himself in charge of planning a weekend of activities. It did not go well. The couple had already done all the obvious, touristy things — what was next? “I was tearing my hair out,” Richardson said.
What he wanted, ideally, was a suggestion from a local. Where would you spend Saturday afternoon in your city? Where would you grab drinks? Dinner? But Richardson didn’t know anyone living in Boston, so he didn’t know where to turn.
There’s got to be a better way to do this, he thought.
And with those magic words Richardson began working on an idea that would, eventually, become Scoozii — his beta-stage app for connecting travelers with locals in real time.
Richardson continued playing around with the idea of this need he saw — to give visitors to a city access to authentic, local suggestions — as he began a graduate entrepreneurship program at American University. There he met his cofounder Evan Levent, who was thinking about a similar concept. They ultimately decided to join forces.
With Richardson bringing the dev skills and Levent bringing the design skills, the duo built two apps (both for iOS) — a traveler-facing app and a “guide” (knowledgeable local) facing app. Both are live, but they’re currently invite-only.
Basically Scoozii works like this:
Say you’re traveling to D.C., don’t know anyone in the city, but want a suggestion on a good restaurant or bar or activity that’s off the beaten path. You download Scoozii for travelers, log on, and answer a few questions about your travel style. Next you see a lineup of “guides” available (at the moment Scoozii has 10-12 guides in D.C. who are available only on weekends), rated according to how closely their interests line up with yours. You pick a guide and given them a call (all calls are currently video chats, but Scoozii is working on a voice call option) — and ask them any questions you may have.
At the end of the call (here’s Scoozii’s current monetization strategy) you’re prompted to choose an amount to tip your guide. The tip is split 50-50 between Scoozii and the guide.
For the moment D.C. is Scoozii’s only market, and the project is a side-hustle for Richardson and Levent. But ultimately the hope is to grow and expand, targeting tourism-heavy cities first. For now the team is focused on getting more beta testers (travelers and guides), both to test the technology itself as well as validate the concept.
“People really want an easier way to connect with locals,” Richardson said. And he’s hoping to build it.