Localeur Gets a Deal With JetBlue and Its Founder Plots a Silicon Valley Move

On Wednesday Localeur announced a partnership with JetBlue Airlines wherein the Austin-based company will tailor content for JetBlue's digital and social channels. The night before, co-founder and CEO Joah Spearman wrote passionately about how he is thinking about leaving the city.

The partnership with JetBlue targets millennials traveling to Austin, New York, San Francisco or Chicago, inviting them to find unique experiences.

Millennials, like most consumers, are coming to value experiences over owning things. In its partnership with Localeur, JetBlue plans to take advantage of that trend with an offering that aims to give its millennial travelers more unique experiences than they could find in a guidebook.

Austin-based Localeur recently hit 1 million users, but may in fact be leaving Austin soon, according to a post Spearman wrote on Medium Tuesday night.

Austin Inno spoke with Spearman about his challenges in Austin and why he's considering leaving town. "I need to go to an environment where people are more familiar with what we're doing, and are able to, both on the front end give us hard data around what we need to be accomplishing, and on the back end, once they do invest in us, they would actually help us get through the next milestones," said Spearman.

And the meetings with Austin VC's haven't given Localeur any direction to work with.

"We're perpetually trying to hit the metrics that no one has given us," said Spearman.

In his Medium post, Spearman wrote that he was told by one Austin VC that if he raised money from a San Francisco VC, the Austin firm would join in the round. And while this isn't unheard of if the company was based in San Francisco, the fact that an Austin company would need to travel to pitch a San Francisco VC in order to secure hometown funding seems arduous.

Part of the challenges lie in the fact that roughly 70% of investable venture capital in Austin has lain in the hands of two firms, Silverton and LiveOak Venture Partners, according to Mike Maples of Floodgate.

Spearman also wonders repeatedly whether being a black founder has held him back in the eyes of VCs in both Silicon Valley and Austin. He's not the only one to ask that kind of question. There is a bit of a "boys club" in Austin VC according to serial entrepreneur Bob Fabbio.

And from the meetings Localeur was able to get, the company was asked about revenue rather than user growth. In an app that relies on crowd-sourcing like Localeur and Yelp, often growing a consumer base is the priority over monetization in it's early years.

With these strikes against raising money in Austin, another hurdle Spearman faced is that by being a black first-time founder, he is subject to tokenism. In many of his meetings, people mention the number of black people in their network and ask if Spearman has spoken with them. Often they're talking about people who haven't started a B2C startup or are even entrepreneurs.

So while a JetBlue partnership surely bodes well for the future of Localeur, it just may not be in Austin. Others have noticed the same thing. "Like many before me, I would find it easier to move to the City (San Francisco) than move to Austin to start a company," wrote serial entrepreneur Richard Bagdonas in a Medium post.

Sadly, he may be right.