WORK Startup
Detour
These guided walking tours are a step ahead of the rest. Here’s how founder Andrew Mason describes the audio app: When I started dating my wife, we were in Rome and wanted a better way to learn about what we were seeing. We loved audio tours but wanted to experience places on our terms. Detour offers audio tours we’ve produced in the city you’re in or traveling to; they’re typically 45–60 minutes and cost $5. One beautiful thing is we worked to make the technology invisible. It’s GPS-based, so you can put your phone in your pocket
and the narrator knows where you are. We try to understand each city’s iconic places and ask, Who’s the most interesting person to tell that story? In San Francisco’s Castro District, we have activist Cleve Jones, who worked with Harvey Milk, and in New York, Tony Award–winner Joel Grey does one on Broadway. We almost think of it as creating an on-location documentary: If you’ve taken a set of Detours, you’ll understand what makes a place tick.
DETOUR BY THE NUMBERS
17 / cities with
Detour
104 / tours available
1 / tour guided
Detour offers turn-by-turn directions, the ability to sync your audio with friends, and the option to download tours to avoid using data.
PHOTOGRAPHY BY GIORGIO FOCHESATO/WESTEND61/OFFSET
by Ken Burns
54 Southwest june 2017
F1_startup_kt.indd 54
5/2/17 12:14 PM