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But Astoria resident Luiggi Pera and
his business partner Gennadii Ivanov are
changing the foodie game with their new
geotag-based app for mapping, tracking
and discovering new foods, Popcity, now
available in the Apple App Store (and soon
to come for Android).
A perhaps unlikely app developer with
no background in tech, Pera worked as a
lawyer for a big NYC bank but was eating
all over the New York food scene in his
spare time. He used search services like
Yelp and Zomato to find new grub, but was
frustrated that he couldn’t find a way to
save an exact meal to look back on. Thus
the idea for Popcity was born.
Since Pera was unfamiliar with the space,
he went to a startup event where he met
Ivanov, who wanted to built an app, but
didn’t know exactly what. Ivanov always
felt strongly that mapping and location
features could be utilized more.
Their first idea was a geotag social
network, but just as the two started
gathering funds from family and friends and
looking into next steps, Pera’s son was born
prematurely. And Snapchat came out with
its Snap Map feature — which practically
mimicked the app they had in mind.
Pera took some time to be with his
family, and the two joined forces again
about a year later (with a healthy son), to
“do it smarter this time,” Pera said. They
conducted surveys on what categories this
kind of mapping service would work best
for, and found that people overwhelmingly
wanted to use it for food (as opposed to
dating or discounts, for example).
They officially launched in January
2019 and have over 2,000 users,
including trusted foodie influencers like
@thehungryturban and @brooklyn_eats_
world.
Photos courtesy of Popcity
Photos by Raven Ishak
/BOROMAG.COM
