Josh Williams, Gowalla Quotes

We want to build things that inspire people to go out and see the world.

We want to build things that inspire people to go out and see the world.

Can we group all of your photos from places in the world and put them in a shoe box where you can share them on Facebook or on Twitter? That’s what we’re getting excited about trying to do.

Fewer than 30 percent of Americans have passports. Anything we can do to help people see the world through a new perspective is great.

I think that as we build companies, we need to be thinking about the long-term changing we’re going to make and asking ‘Are we making people’s lives better?

Until we get to a place where we have battery life that is more reliable, we can write applications that are more respectable to someone’s device. I think that’s what’s restricting us to creating the best application.

I think what’s important are the stories of people — not just the game mechanics of checking in.

Right now, it looks like we’re tapping on a button. In the future, it’ll be as simple as swiping your phone when you get into a show.

There’s the idea that badges are what’s driving this activity, and I think that’s an invalid assumption. It’s the social aspect.

It’s been interesting, because I think game mechanics were a great introduction to location-based services. But it’s not the story.

We’ve seen so many companies now come into market and want to check into books, music, etc. I think we’re kind of drinking our own Kool-Aid here. I don’t think that was ever our intention. We wanted to launch the next thing in location-based interactions. I don’t think we need to necessarily check into everything.

You can’t just build a service that says, ‘Where are my friends?’ It has to do more than that.

There’s been a lot of hype about the geo-location wars. In the end, fundamentally, what we wanted to do and inspire people to do is (trying to make it) a storytelling platform.

The amount of traffic for location-based services that goes through airports is massive. We know you’re on your way to somewhere. (So) how can we give you something to make your trip better?

We really latched onto this idea of checking in and connecting with a moment in time that’s important to you. That’s why we tried creating beautiful passport stamps that would allow you to remember that moment in time.