Hoppit

Hoppit was established in 2011 in New York by co-founders Steven Dziedzic and Emad Saghir. The company positioned itself as a personalized search engine with an initial focus on the restaurant industry. In early 2012, Hoppit launched a website and iPhone application described as the first-ever "ambience search engine for restaurants." This service enabled users to find dining establishments based on atmospheric qualities such as "romantic," "cozy," or "hipster," drawing comparisons to "Pandora for restaurants." The platform utilized Natural Language Processing and a proprietary database of high-resolution, location-based photos to generate its recommendations.

The business catered to diners looking for specific atmospheres, allowing them to filter search results by the type of company they were with—be it family, a date, or colleagues—and by price range. Later in 2012, the company expanded its reach by launching an Android application and announced it had generated one million recommendations. The following year, the iPhone app alone generated three million recommendations. For developers, Hoppit provided APIs that gave access to its repository of restaurant photography and vibe data. The company's efforts were recognized in 2012 when it won an award for "Best Use of Data" at NY Tech Day.

After raising $500,000 in funding, Hoppit was acquired in late 2013 by XO Group, Inc. (formerly known as "The Knot") for an undisclosed amount and became part of the larger company. Co-founder Steven Dziedzic later went on to establish another company called Lasting.

Keywords: restaurant search, ambience search, personalized search engine, food discovery, dining guide, local search, mobile application, restaurant recommendations, atmosphere search, vibe data, restaurant API, New York startup, food tech, restaurant database, photo database, NLP, natural language processing, acquired startup, XO Group, Steven Dziedzic